Quote of the Day: Pope Francis

"We are all sinners [...], the problem is not being a sinner.  The problem is not repenting of our sins, not being ashamed of what we have done."   --- Pope Francis, May 17, 2013

Great Quotes on Economic Policy

"The politicians who negotiate wage deals with public-sector unions are often funded by the same unions [i.e. campaign contributions and ads].  This is one reason why America's municipal finances are a mess."   
- The Economist magazine, Nov. 24, 2012


"The government should not provide any services that are already advertised in the Yellow Pages."    -Jeb Bush


"Some argue that spending cuts are "austerity" and that the sequester has hurt the economy.  Wrong.  The economy and jobs have picked up steam as the government has shrunk.  Through it's still a flimsy recovery, economic growth and government spending have been shown to move in opposite directions in recent years, refuting the Keynesian gospel of the Left.  This has been the pattern for the last 50 years at least.  Milton Friedman had it exactly right: Less government spending means more private-sector growth; there is no magical "multiplier effect" of government spending."

- Stephen Moore for National Review, discussing cause and effect of sequester from 2012 to early 2015.


"I have no problem with people making money, even lots and lots of it.  That is what a free country is all about.  Freedom is the opportunity to work hard and change your economic circumstances by providing great benefits to others.  That is how true capitalists become wealthy.  They provide society with billions in products and get billions of dollars in return.  Everybody wins.  That is not how socialism works.  In a socialist system, the ruling class extracts everything everyone else produces and offers [very little] in return.  It is what i call trickle-up poverty."

(i.e. leftist policy makes everyone equally poor unless you are a member of the elite or oligarchy).

- Michael Savage (radio talk show host and author of Government Zero, 2015)

Great Quotes on Ideology and Philosophy and Government

"[...] the whole purpose of a written constitution is to fix limits on government power.  When judges ignore the textual limitations on government power, this is not judicial "restraint" so much as judicial abdication. [...] If changing conditions suggest that constitutional constraints should be altered, it is not for judges to make these alterations but for the people to act through the amendment process.  Until that point, judges are obligated to enforce the Constitution by its terms, even if it means rejecting the work of democratic majorities and elected representatives.  [...] Judges must force government officers to supply reasons for restrictions on individual liberty and, where such are lacking, be willing to strike laws down."

--- Jonathan H. Adler, writing for National Review magazine, 2016.


"For more than 100 years, progressives have sought to "transform" America, to make the political, economic, cultural, and legal foundation of our constitutional republic (our "regime" in the Aristotelian-Tocquevillian sense) more statist, more centralized, more regulatory, more "European", more secular, and less capitalist, less entrepreneurial, less "provincial", less religious, less exceptional."

---- John Fonte for National Review magazine, in a review of the book Taming Globalization by Yoo and Ku about the concerns of international law conflicting with United States sovereignty.



"You cannot go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal."


--- Actor Robert Downey Jr. explaining his transformation to a more conservative thinker after dealing with a difficult time during his life.








"I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing - direct murder by the mother herself."

---Mother Teresa, after winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.





"Psychology has served up one excuse after another for bad behavior - our terrible childhoods, our genes, our neurotransmitters, our addictions.  In each case, and often with extremely unscientific reasoning, we are offered absolution.  The whole psychological enterprise [...] has had the effect of excusing poor choices and bad character.  'Virtue is [no longer] manifested in one's behavior, always so difficult and tedious to control, but in one's attitude to victims'."

---Mona Charen, for National Review, in a book review of T. Dalrymple's "Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality"



"You just have to get that word 'average' out of your vocabulary.  And you have to tell yourself that you are great.  And you have to believe it.  [...] So just go out there and work hard."

--Donald Trump, successful business and real-estate tycoon and US presidential nominee in 2016.






"My parents' priority  was building character, not maintaining my happiness.  They wanted to raise a child who would love God and live by the Golden Rule.  So I had to learn that i was not the center of the universe.  I had to learn that i was often wrong.  And i had to learn the daily courage necessary to confront and overcome problems on my own, without constantly appealing to a higher earthly authority [government] for aid and comfort."

--David French, in writing for National Review Magazine



"Che Guevara was a murderer.  He wasn't a hero.  Also, Raul and Fidel are murderers, not legitimate authorities, not legitimate heads of state.  They are there by force, not by the will of the people."

--Danilo "El Sexto" Maldaonado, Cuban citizen, artist, and young rebellious leader in Cuba, fighting for freedom from leftist oppression.



"The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left [democrats] is that they do not work.  Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive." (i.e. universities; government departments)

--Thomas Sowell



"The fate of the world depends on the United States, the fate of the United States depends on the conservative movement, and the fate of the conservative movement depends on the health and success of the Republican party."

-- Harry Jaffa (author)


"Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman were ultimately provincial, repetitive, narcissistic nihilists who could tell us nothing about how to live together and who had "emancipated" themselves from the religious, rational, and ethical traditions of the past that animated the best human behavior: their solipsistic "secular incarnation involves a denial of history and an extreme anti-nomianism."

--Laura Dassow Walls (author) and M.D. Aeschliman (Nationial Review)

Quote of the day: Redevelopment Authorities (city planning)

"...RDAs [redevelopment authorities] operate in the most expensive way possible.  It is a fact that government, as an entity, is the least efficient way to do anything.  Witness the high-speed rail conflagration in California and the recent collapse of cities [bankruptcies] throughout the US.  For an RDA to use tax money to provide for development that should and could be privately accomplished with efficient and effective leadership simply inhibits growth.  Californians are now paying more than 65% of their income in [combined] taxes.  How can someone earning less than 7 figures survive on a disposable income that is 35% of gross?  The affordable housing crisis is a result.  Simply put, there is no private money left to invest.  It all goes into taxes, which are used to pay for unnecessary government programs, wages, and benefits.  The situation will get worse as the tax base declines when people decide they can no longer manage to live in California."                  - Joseph E. Herbert

Misuse of Qu'ran quote by islam apologists

Use of Qu'ran (5:32) verse 32 of Surah 5 very well explained....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-SoXs-0_rHY&bpctr=1369788197

5:33 is the verse that needs to be repeated to those who use 5:32 to defend islamic teaching.

Quote of the Day (May 6, 2013)

From National Review's John D. Davidson for a book review:

"...there's no dismissing the Lone Star State, no matter what one thinks of it.  Five years on from the Great Recession, Texas's low-tax, pro-business [republican] policies have largely shielded its residents and businesses form the economic downturn suffered by the rest of the country.  Between 2009 and 2011, whe unemployment was hovering between 9 and 10 percent nationwide, Texas alone created 40 percent of America's new jobs.  Last year, it accounted for nearly 9 percent of the country's economy.  Millions of people have moved there over the past decade, drawn by the promise of work.

The plain facts of the Texas economy confound liberals [democrats], who have a hard time believing in this so-called Texas Miracle, despite mounting evidence that it is real and durable, taht something fundamental about Texas's approach to economic growth is distinguishing it from, say [democrat controlled] California."

Ode to the Welfare State

For another example of how human nature and politics do not change over time, here is a 1949 example of sarcasm used to vilify the unsustainable democrat economic policy of central government welfare programs....

Unfortunately, democrats misinterpret the Constitution as usual, "promoting" the general welfare (which is what our founding fathers wrote) is not the same thing as "providing" for the general welfare.  It is not the role of the central government to provide charity, it is their role to promote conditions that encourage hard work, reward, opportunity to succeed for all citizens.  Charity is for us as individuals and communities to provide.