Category: Thought

Modern liberalism suffers unresolved contradictions. It exalts individualism and freedom and, on its radical wing, condemns social orders as oppressive. On the other hand, it expects governments to provide materially for all, a feat manageable only by an expansion of authority and a swollen bureaucracy. In other words, liberalism defines government as tyrant father but demands it behave as nurturant mother. Feminism has inherited these contradictions.

Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, p. 3.

That judges of important causes should hold office for life is a disputable thing, for the mind grows old as well as the body.

Aristotle, Politics, Book II, 1270b.39.

You can only be young once. But you can always be immature.

Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.

Gravity is contributing factor in 73 percent of all accidents involving falling objects.

Levity from Dave Barry

Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.

“America is full of politicians but few statesmen. If you think this is a recent problem, think again. It has been discussed since the founding.

“Americans have also grown fond of political dynasties: Clinton, Bush, Gore, etc. Even if the last election appeared to repudiate that trend, don’t get too comfortable. Modern politicians are like cockroaches. You can exterminate a few, but there will always be more.”

Brion McClanahan, daily email letter of The Brion McClanahan Show, March 29, 2017.

It pisses me off that nearly every major talking head advocates gun control, arrogant in their belief that most Americans can’t be trusted to arm and protect themselves without hurting others. Meanwhile, it’s these same talking heads who never have to worry about being shot at by a crazed lunatic, because the lunatic and the talking head are separate from each other by five layers of security.

Greg Gutfeld, “Katie Couric’s Life Is More Important Than the Average College Freshman’s (Even If She Looks Remarkably Like an Elf),” The Bible of Unspeakable Truths (2010), p. 4. Photographs, above, depict: journalist Juan Williams, who has nothing to do with this snippet of Gutfeldiana; a sidearm, which does; and Greg Gutfeld himself. Gutfeld is the one that is not black. Or gun-metal gray.

The law is reason unaffected by desire.

“The Greek writer, Aristotle, quoted some centuries before Christ from ‘the African,’ probably some Carthaginian writer on agriculture, the now familiar saying, ‘the best manure for the land is the foot of the owner.’ This homely word long attributed to Dr. Franklin, who stole it for his ‘Poor Richard’s Almanack’ more than a century ago, is based on the sound principle, that personal supervision to be most effective must be limited in its sphere, and that the best agricultural skill becomes weak when it attempts to exhibit itself on too broad a surface. Because a man can cultivate 100 acres better than any of his neighbors, it does not prove that he will cultivate 50 acres additional to them better than a neighbor of inferior skill, who is the owner of these 50 and no more.”

Arthur Latham Perry, Principles of Political Economy (1891).