The Reformer's Firebrand

*-{The New Canadian Colonist's Advocate }-* A commentary of fiery reformist sentiment from the spirit of it's 210 year old Canadian ghost publisher patron. This will be a home to the new wave of anti-partisan advocacy for defeating Canada's second "family compact" and reinstallation of responsible governance in this 21st century new Canadian democratic dominion.

Friday, August 19, 2005

Friday Quotes Rodeo/ Tag

As promised I thought this may be an amusment for the weekend. Here is a profusion of quotes enunciating my prime philosophical absolute: That empirical evidence indicts organized government as the nemesis of all free men and individual liberty. This time I'm posting quotes from my favorite reasoned skeptic H.L. Mencken.

"All government is, in its essence, organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing forms it is the implacable enemy of every industrious and well-disposed man."

"Every election is a sort of advance auction of stolen goods."

"Law and its instrument, government, are necessary to the peace and safety of all of us, but all of us, unless we live the lives of mud turtles, frequently find them arrayed against us..."

"A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker."

"It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume...that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with a relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the assumption into a fact. They hunt endlessly for proofs, and, when proofs are lacking, for mere suspicions."

"The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse-that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it."

"The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself... Almost inevitably, he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable."


Got some good ones? Add them to the comments and I'm going to start a quotes tag among the blogging Tories to see how they fair on providing quotes on the same subject.

8 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"The only time Government is tolerable is when you have checks and balances in place to check the abuse of power. Take these away and you an elected dictatorship that has free reign to control and dupe the public".

August 19, 2005 at 1:47 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

An honest politican is one who, once bought, stays bought!

August 19, 2005 at 3:55 PM  
Blogger W.L. Mackenzie Redux said...

O lIke your axiom anonymous but would add that the only owner of a politician ( those who "bought him") are his constituents. Loyalty sold to anyone else is a crime.

August 19, 2005 at 4:02 PM  
Blogger Paul said...

I go by the belief that in most cases, it's the selfish narcissistic nature of constituence who make the politician corrupt; in the sense that only the political whore gets elected in many ridings. The politician, in essence, is a mirror image of those who elected him.

August 19, 2005 at 5:05 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Debris Trail is absolutely right.

Wasn't it Andre Malraux, who was a minister in one of De Gaulle's
Governments (whether it was the 1946 provisional government or post 1959 i'm not sure) who said people must be fed their illusions, they couldn't handle the truth, or words to that effect.

The current Liberal Government feeds people's illusions, but the day will come when truth intervenes and the edifice starts
to fall apart. You can only cheat the truth for so long.

August 20, 2005 at 6:13 AM  
Blogger W.L. Mackenzie Redux said...

Fog/DT: here's an Alexander tyler quote that sums up your reflections ...interestingly, your observations were known to classic liberal statesmen and philosophers in the 18th centuy who saw dangers in constituent greed and mixing democracy with collectivism:

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage." [Alexander Tyler]


What stage are Canada's nanny state, largess addicted sheep at now?

August 20, 2005 at 10:20 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think Canada's reached the point between apathy and dependency. I think bondage is not to far off.

The UK is not far behind.

August 21, 2005 at 2:18 AM  
Blogger ABFreedom said...

LOL ... your quote Tag is really getting around, and it wasn't till after that Candice said there was rules. hehe.

uh ... it's kind of branched out from just being politics.. makes for some interesting reading .. LOL

August 21, 2005 at 9:57 AM  

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