Tag: quote

Mr. Franklin, if you only knew

One of things you have to love about Benjamin Franklin was his optimism with regard to those who hold public office.

They are of the People, and return again to mix with the People, having no more durable preeminence than the different Grains of Sand in an Hourglass. Such an Assembly cannot easily become dangerous to Liberty. They are the Servants of the People, sent together to do the People’s Business, and promote the public Welfare; their Powers must be sufficient, or their Duties cannot be performed. They have no profitable Appointments, but a mere Payment of daily Wages, such as are scarcely equivalent to their Expences; so that, having no Chance for great Places, and enormous Salaries or Pensions, as in some Countries, there is no triguing or bribing for Elections.
–letter to George Whatley, 23 May 1785
Reference: Franklin Collected Works, Lemay, ed., 1108.
[Via the Patriot Post.]

Random note from the Retrophisch™ hPDA

“Long-term pessimism is irrational. (Short-term is, too.)”

Inquiring minds want to know

Craig Shirley:

Please explain to me how our children have had no school yesterday and today so that the Teachers Unions can go out and organize for Democratic candidates — but the schools will be open on Friday when the federal Government and most offices will be closed to commemorate our nation’s war heroes?
This must be an East Coast (West, too?) thing, or perhaps confined to Shirley’s home state (Virginia?). The kids were in school yesterday and are today in DFW.

Hamilton favors a national sales tax

“It is a singular advantage of taxes on articles of consumption that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. They prescribe their own limit, which cannot be exceeded without defeating the end purposed — that is, an extension of the revenue.” — Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 21
(Of course, any talk of instituting a national sales tax has to go hand-in-hand with repealing the Sixteenth Amendment, and the end of the income tax.)

Windows: neurotic

Jack Good, mathematician:

“My Windows 98 computer tells lies and often forces me to shut down improperly. Such behaviour in a human would be called neurotic.”

Founders’ wisdom

“Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands.”
— Thomas Jefferson (letter to James Madison, 1784)

We’ll accept help from everyone, except…

Jeff Jacoby:

[I]t was not until Oct. 14, six days after Israel had communicated its willingness to help the earthquake victims “in any way possible,” that it finally received a formal response. Yes, aid from Israel would be welcome, provided it was laundered through a third party. “We have established the president’s relief fund, and everyone is free to contribute to it,” a government spokeswoman coolly acknowledged. “If Israel was to contribute — that’s fine, we would accept it.” Israel could help save Pakistani lives, in other words, as long as it wasn’t too public about doing so. There mustn’t be any embarrassing images of planes with Israeli markings offloading relief supplies at Islamabad’s airport.

Why the two-parent family is important

John Leo:

Two decades of research produced a consensus among social scientists of both left and right that family structure has a serious impact on children, even when controlling for income, race, and other variables. In other words, we are not talking about a problem of race but about a problem of family formation or, rather, the lack of it. The best outcomes for children–whether in academic performance, avoidance of crime and drugs, or financial and economic success–are almost invariably produced by married biological parents. The worst results are by never-married women.

[…]

The upshot of these studies is that America is confronted by a form of poverty that money alone can’t cure. Many of us think social breakdown is a result of racism and poverty. Yes, they are factors, but study after study shows that alterations in norms and values are at the heart of economic and behavioral troubles. That’s why so much research boils down to the old rule: If you want to avoid poverty, finish high school, don’t have kids in your teens, and get married.

Someone call the exterminator

“I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” –Thomas Jefferson

The Standard

“[T]he present Constitution is the standard to which we are to cling. Under its banners, bona fide must we combat our political foes – rejecting all changes but through the channel itself provides for amendments.” — Alexander Hamilton (letter to James Bayard, April 1802)