“It has been observed by an honorable gentleman, that a pure democracy, if it were practicable, would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved, that no position in politics is more false than this. The ancient democracies, in which the people themselves deliberated, never possessed one feature of good government.—Their very character was tyranny; […]
Entries from November 2014
Get real, you dreamers
November 30th, 2014 · No Comments
Tags: Politics & Law · The American Constitution
Maybe… maybe not
November 29th, 2014 · No Comments
“The most damnable thing in the world is a servile copyist!” – Admiral John Fisher (quoted by Winston Churchill in The World Crisis)
Tags: Economics · Lit & Crit · The Great War
Take two aspirin and call me in the morning
November 28th, 2014 · No Comments
“It is customary for thoughtless people to jeer at the old diplomacy and to pretend that wars arise out of its secret machinations. When one looks at the petty subjects which have led to wars between great countries and to so many disputes, it is easy to be misled in this way. Of course such […]
Tags: Economics · Lit & Crit · Politics & Law · The Great War
Or to being shot down like dogs
November 27th, 2014 · No Comments
“Society can only exist if the normal, if the virtuous, and the slightly deceitful flourish, and if the passionate, the headstrong, and the too-truthful are condemned to suicide and to madness.” – Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier
Tags: Lit & Crit · The Great War
Baby, it’s cold outside
November 26th, 2014 · No Comments
“We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist.” – Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier
Tags: Lit & Crit · The Great War
Surprise, surprise
November 25th, 2014 · No Comments
“The instances of honesty that one comes across in this world are just as amazing as the instances of dishonesty.” – Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier
Tags: Lit & Crit · The Great War
In case you’ve lost track
November 24th, 2014 · No Comments
“You never merely write; you write to someone.” – Deborah E. Bouchoux, Aspen Handbook for Legal Writers (emphasis in original)
Tags: Lit & Crit · Verandah
A meet and joyful noyse
November 23rd, 2014 · No Comments
“Reasons briefely set downe by the auctor to perswade every one to lerne to singe. First, it is a knowledge easely taught, and quickly learned, where there is a good master, and an apt scoller. Second, the exercise of singing is delightful to nature, and good to preserve the health of Man. Third, it doth […]
Tags: Lit & Crit · Verandah
Come falling down
November 22nd, 2014 · No Comments
“The proud tower built up through the great age of European civilization was an edifice of grandeur and passion, of riches and beauty and dark cellars. Its inhabitants lived, as compared to a later time, with more self-reliance, more confidence, more hope; greater magnificence, extravagance and elegance; more careless ease, more gaiety, more pleasure in […]
Tags: Lit & Crit · The Great War
Busybody do-gooders
November 21st, 2014 · No Comments
“Like a crack in a plank of wood which cannot be sealed, the difference between the worker and the intellectual was ineradicable in Socialism. Organized Socialism bore the name Workingmen’s Association but in fact it was never any such thing. It was a movement not of, but on behalf of, the working class, and the […]
Tags: Lit & Crit · Politics & Law · The Great War
You, who are on the road
November 20th, 2014 · No Comments
“A careful education of youth, and strict family government, will operate like leaven—and lay a foundation to hope for better fruit from the rising generation, than ought to have been expected from the generality of those at present on the stage, had we considered the dissipation of the times when their manners were forming. Children […]
Tags: Politics & Law · The American Constitution
Say it ain’t too late, Joe
November 19th, 2014 · 2 Comments
“No form of government can make a vicious and ignorant people happy.—When the majority of our citizens becomes corrupt, even our well ballanced constitution cannot save us from slavery and ruin. Let it therefore be the unceasing study of all who love their country, to promote virtue and dispense knowledge through the whole extent of […]
Tags: Politics & Law · The American Constitution
Join the union while you may, don’t wait till your dying day, for that may not be far away
November 18th, 2014 · No Comments
“For unskilled and unorganized labour, working conditions matched the slums. At the Shawfield Chemical Works in Glasgow in 1897, year of the Diamond Jubilee, workmen received 3d. or 4d. an hour for a twelve-hour day, seven days a week, spent amid poisonous vapors without a lunch-hour rest. They ate lunch standing at the furnaces and […]
Tags: Economics · Lit & Crit · The Great War
All the children left behind
November 17th, 2014 · No Comments
“In the slums people lived three to a bedroom of 700 cubic feet or, with children, eight and nine in a space of 1,200 cubic feet. Vermin lived with them, a piece of paper on the floor served as a toilet, fish on Sundays was the weekly protein for a family of eight, at two […]
Tags: Economics · Lit & Crit · Politics & Law · The Great War
The Press is rumoured to Inform and Enlighten
November 16th, 2014 · No Comments
“To accomplish the ends of Society by being equal to Contingencies infinite, demands the deposit of power great and extensive indeed in the hands of Rulers. So great, as to render abuse probable, unless prevented by the most careful precautions: among which, the freedom & frequency of elections, the liberty of the Press, the Trial […]
Tags: Politics & Law · The American Constitution
Tyrannies acceptable and unacceptable
November 15th, 2014 · No Comments
“In a free government, the voice of the people, expressed by the votes of a majority, must be the rule, or we shall be left without any certain rule to determine what is politically right. To depart from it, is establishing tyranny by law. It would be a solemn renunciation of the forms and substance […]
Tags: Politics & Law · The American Constitution
We got it from the French
November 14th, 2014 · No Comments
“To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied on, regulated, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, ruled, censored, by persons who have neither wisdom nor virtue. It is every action and transaction to be registered, stamped, taxed, patented, licensed, assessed, measured, reprimanded, corrected, frustrated. Under pretext of the public good it is to be exploited, monopolized, […]
Tags: Lit & Crit · Politics & Law · The Great War
The dream lingers long after dawn
November 13th, 2014 · No Comments
“The Anarchists believed that with Property, the monarch of all evil, eliminated, no man could again live off the labour of another and human nature would be released to seek its natural level of justice among men. The role of the State would be replaced by voluntary cooperation among individuals and the role of the […]
Tags: Economics · Lit & Crit · Politics & Law · The Great War
Conditions that are reckoned incentives
November 12th, 2014 · No Comments
“They came from the warrens of the poor, where hunger and dirt were king, where consumptives coughed and the air was thick with the smell of latrines, boiling cabbage and stale beer, where babies wailed and couples screamed in sudden quarrels, where roofs leaked and unmended windows let in the cold blasts of winter, where […]
Tags: Economics · Lit & Crit · Politics & Law · The Great War
All we would need would be killing
November 11th, 2014 · No Comments
“So enchanting was the vision of a stateless society, without government, without law, without ownership of property, in which, corrupt institutions having been swept away, man would be free to be good as God intended him, that six heads of state were assassinated for its sake in the twenty years before 1914.” – Barbara Tuchman, […]
Tags: Lit & Crit · The Great War
That’s a large part of what it’s for
November 10th, 2014 · No Comments
“Are we to consider men entrusted with power as the receptacles of all the depravity of human nature? By no means. The people do not part with their full proportions of it. Reason and revelation both deceive us, if they are all wise and virtuous. Is not history as full of the vices of the […]
Tags: Politics & Law · The American Constitution
A sport and a pastime
November 9th, 2014 · No Comments
“Friends, let me tell you: Sitting outside and reading is not a difficult art to master.” – Matt Bell, Facebook, June 25, 2014.
Tags: Lit & Crit · Verandah
Takes one to know one
November 8th, 2014 · No Comments
“No kind of Accusation is so readily made, or so easily believ’d, by Knaves as the Accusation of Knavery.” – Benjamin Franklin, letter to Philadelphia Federal Gazette, April 8, 1788
Tags: Politics & Law · The American Constitution
They have their faves
November 7th, 2014 · No Comments
“Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.” – Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August
Tags: Lit & Crit · Politics & Law · The Great War
Always a little light glimmers through
November 6th, 2014 · No Comments
“The supposition of universal venality in human nature is little less an error in political reasoning than the supposition of universal rectitude. The institution of delegated power implies that there is a portion of virtue and honor among mankind, which may be a reasonable foundation of confidence. And experience justifies the theory: It has been […]
Tags: Politics & Law · The American Constitution
In favor of the oak
November 5th, 2014 · No Comments
“There are some, who would be inclined to regard the servile pliancy of the executive to a prevailing current, either in the community, or in the Legislature, as its best recommendation. But such men entertain very crude notions, as well of the purposes for which government was instituted, as of the true means by which […]
Tags: Politics & Law · The American Constitution
The parental controls of the nanny-state
November 4th, 2014 · No Comments
“The internet is, in effect, a library of unimaginable size—full, as all libraries are, of news, gossip, archive material and other stuff which may to varying degrees be irrelevant, wrong or mad. It has made the best and worst of such information more freely available than ever before. Search engines should be like library catalogues—comprehensive […]
Tags: Lit & Crit · Politics & Law
It sounds so simple and straightforward
November 3rd, 2014 · No Comments
“An attention to the judgment of other nations is important to every government for two reasons: The one is, that independently of the merits of any particular plan or measure, it is desireable on various accounts, that it should appear to other nations as the offspring of a wise and honorable policy: The second is, […]
Tags: Politics & Law · The American Constitution
USA, Ltd.
November 2nd, 2014 · No Comments
“All writers on government agree, and the feelings of the human mind witness the truths of these political axioms, that man is born free and possessed of certain unalienable rights—that government is instituted for the protection, safety, and happiness of the people, and not for the profit, honour, or private interest of any man, family, […]
Tags: Politics & Law · The American Constitution
Guys Come in Three Sizes
November 1st, 2014 · No Comments
Gravel Magazine’s November 2014 issue has been published, and includes one of my stories — “Guys Come in Three Sizes.” http://www.gravelmag.com/tetman-callis.html
Tags: Previously Published Stories · Words