gharlane

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• Politics What most of the industrialized world, except the United States, would call "centrist." In this country, they call it "far left."

Favorites

• Favorite Books Daniel Levitin, "This Is Your Brain On Music"
  
  James Hillman & Michael Ventura, "We've Had 100 Years of Psychotherapy and the World is Getting Worse"
  
  Naomi Wolf, "The End Of America: A Letter to a Young Patriot"
  
  Howard Zinn, "A People's History of the United States"
  
  Al Gore, "The Assault on Reason"
  
  Jeff Cohen, "Cable News Confidential"
• Favorite Quotes "Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." (James Madison)
  
  "In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people." (James Madison)
  
  "I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." (James Madison)
  
  "Those who profess to favor freedom, yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. 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." (Frederick Douglass)
  
  "Kenosis puts the emptiness in a new light. It values the emptiness. It says "empty protest" is a via negativa, ... You take your outrage seriously, but you don't force yourself to have answers. Trust your nose. You know what stinks..... I don't know what should be done about most of the major political dilemmas, but my gut (my soul, my heart, my skin, my eyes) sinks, creeps, crawls, weeps, cringes, shakes. It's wrong, simply wrong, what's going on here.... It's what the Hindus call neti, neti, neti -- not this, not this, not this." (James Hillman)
  
  "The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do." (Samuel P. Huntington)
  
  "Jackson is the first redneck president, and the first thing he did was to remove the Indians. Imagine if you're Jewish in Germany today and you go to the ATM and pull out 20 euros and you see Adolph Hitler on the bill. That's what every Native American goes through in this country." (Steve Earle)
  
  "The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist." (Winston Churchill)
  
  "Christianity's such an odd religion, you know. The whole image is that eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God's infinite love." (Anonymous)
  
  "We have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of the world’s population.… Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security." (George Kennan, 1948)
  
  "Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy." (George Kennan, 1987)
  
  "This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. 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." (President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961)
  
  "But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and then denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." (Hermann Goering)
  
  "I think it would be a good idea." (Mohandas K. Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization)