“Naturally the common people don’t want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. 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 denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. IT WORKS THE SAME IN ANY COUNTRY.”
Hermann Goering, President of the Reichstag, Nazi Party, and Luftwaffe Commander in Chief, from Gilbert, G.M. (1947). Nurenberg Diary, New York: Signet
Since Think will not put my group Citizens for a Constitutional Government on my profile page after asking them nicely multiple times it is still listed last in the entire list of groups I am a member of, here is a link you can copy and paste into your browser to find it easily.
http://think.mtv.com/Groups/Citizens/
My goal here is to debate topics and further educate myself and others about the problems we face today in government and government economics, why we face them, and how to effect change once voted in at all levels of government.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army:Edward Everett
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
-Martin Luther King Jr.
It is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists will we be?
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
“We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”Benjamin Franklin
“In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.” -Mark Twain1904
"When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny." Thomas Jefferson
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"Benjamin Franklin
"It's an old adage that the way to be safe is never to be secure…each one of us requires the spur of insecurity to force us to do our best."
Harold W. Dodds - American educator (1889–1980)
A great wave of oppressive tyranny isn't going to strike, but rather a slow seepage of oppressive laws and regulations from within will sink the American dream of liberty:George Baumler
"I am concerned for the security of our great nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within." General Douglas MacArthur
The powers in charge keep us in a perpetual state of fear keep us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real. General Douglas MacArthur
It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear. General Douglas MacArthur
The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home:James Madison: US fourth president, 1751-1836
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector:Plato: Ancient Greek philosopher (428/427-348/347 B.C.)
The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience:Albert Camus: French novelist, essayist, and playwright.1957 Nobel Prize for Literature. 1913-1960
"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing [a people] to slavery." --Thomas Jefferson: Rights of British America, 1774. (*) ME 1:193, Papers 1:125
If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.Thomas Jefferson
"The tragedy of the day is the ignorance self imposed through closed mindedness" -Jason Butts