By Sarge
The art of leadership… consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention.
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but they are ravening wolves.
Conducting politics is similar to a vaudeville act in a desert. The implications can seem daunting. The stage is an expanse needing navigation skills unfamiliar to many finding themselves within its boundaries. There are vast expanses of land and horizon seemingly stretching into the infinite depths of time and space. What appears close may be deceptively far away. The nourishment necessary to survive must be carried with you and failure to control your vital resources can prove deadly.
The ground is unstable; shifting sands moving at the whim of winds and other influences most people don’t recognize or understand. One day your course seems right, the next day your landmarks are moved, or gone completely.
The shadows of dusk and the deepening night obscure the defining elements of the vista before us. The issue doesn’t change but the mists enfolding it, encompassing it, obscuring it make the decision process so much more difficult.
- Details
- Written by: Super User
- Category: Philosophy
- Hits: 4148
By Sarge
Darkness by virtue of its existence leads to enlightenment. One can’t exist without the appreciation of the other. Mishe Mehtug-Nipmuck Sachem Wanabe
We live in a world of crystalline perceptions. Things are clear and precise in one plane and diffused and stellar from another angle of attack. It’s to be appreciated when a person offers to help others to better themselves and progress in a manner never before thought of or attempted. But there are always pitfalls to any endeavor; pitfalls such as the tiny strings attached that stabilize one element while endangering another with the tensions of their attachment. Clouds billowing before the rush of high altitude wind currents conceal the tornado lurking, waiting to form. A majestic river flows and courses serenely before the torrent of a storm increases its volume beyond containment. The beauty of the Cobra belies the power of its venom. One apparent beauty conceals the greater tragedy.
In this nation we have a political action taking place. Over a hundred years ago we turned our back on an estate on which a man could be forced to live without choice. American slavery ceased to be.
Now, to our shame we’re engendering a new form of slavery, a benign format of servitude requiring the willingness and culpability of the enslaved to accept the sovereignty of the master. It’s the Progressive encroachment of government taking dominion over a nation. It’s a moral, emotional, mentally selfish form of enslavement. It’s one we’ve refused to recognize since the beginning of the twentieth century. And the masters want us to thank them for the chains.
- Details
- Written by: Super User
- Category: Philosophy
- Hits: 4650
Peddling the Corruption of Liberty
by Dr. Tibor Machan
Ever since the idea of individual liberty has achieved some measure of credibility over the world, those who would be unseated by its limited triumph had to find some way to discredit it or trump it somehow. One way was to re-christen servitude, to make it appear like an even more important kind of liberty than what individual liberty, properly understood, amounts to.
When a human being is free in the most important, political sense, he or she is sovereign. This means that one governs one's own life-others must refrain from intruding on this life, plain and simple. That life may be fortunate or not, rich or not, beautiful or not, and many other things or not, but what matters is that that life is no one else's to mess with. One gets to run it, no one else does.
Now this is a very uncomfortable idea for all those folks who see all kinds of benefits from running other people's lives. But they cannot champion this now in so many words, what with individual liberty having gained solid enough standing, so the only way to remedy matters for them is to claim that their oppression brings even greater freedom to people than the respect and protection of individual liberty.
So, we have the kind of "freedoms" propounded by Franklin D. Roosevelt, the freedoms now dubbed "positive." These freedoms do not get rid of those who would use you, interfere with you, invade your life, rob, kill, or assault you but promise, to the contrary, to take good care of you without your having to do much by invading others, by violating their individual liberties. These are the entitlement rights offered up by proponents of the welfare state, all those who claim that government is best when it is generous, when it becomes the Nanny State-meaning, when it enslaves Peter to serve Paul.
- Details
- Written by: Super User
- Category: Philosophy
- Hits: 4207
By Chuck Baldwin
February 23 marks the anniversary of the beginning of the battle of the Alamo back in 1836. For more than 13 days, 186 brave and determined patriots withstood Santa Anna's seasoned army of over 4,000 troops. To a man, the defenders of that mission fort knew they would never leave those ramparts alive. They had several opportunities to leave and live. Yet, they chose to fight and die. How foolish they must look to this generation of spoiled Americans.
It is difficult to recall that stouthearted men such as Davy Crockett (a nationally known frontiersman and former congressman), Will Travis (only 23 years old with a little baby at home), and Jim Bowie (a wealthy landowner with properties on both sides of the Rio Grande) really existed. These were real men with real dreams and real desires. Real blood flowed through their veins. They loved their families and enjoyed life as much as any of us do. There was something different about them, however. They possessed a commitment to liberty that transcended personal safety and comfort.
Liberty is an easy word to say, but it is a hard word to live up to. Freedom has little to do with financial gain or personal pleasure. Accompanying Freedom is her constant and unattractive companion, Responsibility. Neither is she an only child. Patriotism and Morality are her sisters. They are inseparable: destroy one and all will die.
Early in the siege, Travis wrote these words to the people of Texas: "Fellow Citizens & Compatriots: I am besieged by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna. . . . The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise the garrison are to be put to the sword . . . I have answered the demand with a cannon shot & our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat. . . . VICTORY OR DEATH! P.S. The Lord is on our side. . . ."
- Details
- Written by: Super User
- Category: Philosophy
- Hits: 3714
