I believe that the ideological differences between Liberals, Socialists and Communists are in the details, not in their purposes. Fundamentally they all want the same thing - they want to rule over others who they view as "Untermenchen".
This page contains some quotes I've accumulated over time related to Liberals and their beliefs.
Comments related to 'LIBERALS' and politicians in general
"Some people say it is 'name-calling' if you refer to someone as a liberal. There is nothing inherently negative about the word 'liberal.' If it has acquired negative overtones, that is because of what liberals have done and the consequences that followed." —Thomas Sowell
“Liberals are always at their best chuckling at the ways of those they regard as hicks. That’s because liberals place far more importance on sophistication than on character, decency and values.” —Burt Prelutsky
"If you believe the left is tolerant, open-minded and democratic, you're in for a rude awakening." --columnist David Limbaugh
"Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others." - John F. Kennedy
So, while I acknowledge that liberals can be as loyal and steadfast as cocker spaniels, I have found it is nearly impossible to paper-train them." --Burt Prelutsky
"A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel" - Robert Frost.
A liberal is one who doubts his own assumptions even when he's proceeding from them to a conclusion. - Anonymous
“Liberalism is so impressed with its own brilliance that results apparently don’t matter.” —Brent Bozell
“To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection: it is plunder.” —Benjamin Disraeii
"Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views." --William F. Buckley Jr.
“A liberal is a man who will give away everything he doesn’t own.” —Frank Dane
"Some people say that a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged." - Mike S. Adams
"Broad-minded is just another way of saying a fellow is too lazy to form an opinion" - Will Rogers
“There is something about a Republican that you can only stand him just so long; and on the other hand, there is something about a Democrat that you can’t stand him quite that long.” —Will Rogers
“I want to believe that some of our politicians are just blinded to the truth of what we are facing, but reality tells me that there are some in politics who hate everything that this country stands for and want to see us defeated, again, by our enemies. But this enemy is unlike any that we have ever faced. May God help us to stand for what we believe, or we will certainly fall before the onslaught of radical Islam.”—Sgt. Roger Helle (USMC Ret.)
Some people ask, "Are Liberals The Worst Bigots of All?" - Alicia Colon
“Liberals, it has been said, are generous with other peoples’ money, except when it comes to questions of national survival when they prefer to be generous with other people’s freedom and security.” —William F. Buckley Jr.
“In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.” —Voltaire
"Generally, liberals tend to be mentally rigid and closed-minded because they are insecure, the result of low self-esteem and arrested emotional development associated, predominantly, with fatherless households or critically dysfunctional families in which they were not adequately affirmed. They exhibit fear, anger, and aggression -- the behavioral consequences of arrested emotional development associated with childhood trauma (primarily rejection by a significant family member of origin as noted above).....Medically speaking, there is a diagnosis for Leftist over-achievers like Bill Clinton and Albert Gore. They are pathological case studies of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders -- the standard reference used for psychiatric evaluation." - Mark Alexander
"Conservatives are caught by surprise because they see [liberals] as merely misguided, when in fact they are fundamentally misdirected. They are the messianists of a religious faith. But it is a false faith and a self-serving religion. Since the redeemed future that justifies their existence and rationalizes their hypocrisy can never be realized, what really motivates [liberals] is a modern idolatry: their limitless passion for the continuance of Them". - David Horowitz (Please read the linked page)
“No free Government can stand without virtue in the people, and a lofty spirit of patriotism; and if the sordid feelings of mere selfishness shall usurp the place which ought to be filled by public spirit, the legislation of Congress will soon be converted into a scramble for personal and sectional advantages.” —President Andrew Jackson
“People who make careers out of helping others—sometimes at great sacrifice, often not—usually don’t like to hear that those others might get along fine, might even get along better, without their help.” —John Holt
"Liberals always get a lot of credit for suffering, while never actually being made to suffer." - Ann Coulter
"Whenever the Left doesn’t want you to know the truth, it attacks.” —Gary Bauer
"Modern conservatives seek re-election in order to govern; modern liberals govern so as to seek re-election" - Charles DiGiovanna
“[I]f industry and labour are left to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those objects which are the most productive, and this in a more certain and direct manner than the wisdom of the most enlightened legislature could point out.” —James Madison
“If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.” —Thomas Jefferson
“To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.” -Thomas Jefferson
“A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul.” - George Bernard Shaw
“Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.” - Franklin Delano Roosevelt
“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” - Karl Marx
“The goal of the ‘liberals’ —as it emerges from the record of the past decades—was to smuggle this country into welfare statism by means of single, concrete, specific measures, enlarging the power of the government a step at a time, [see Oligarchy] never permitting these steps to be summed up into principles, never permitting their direction to be identified or the basic issue to be named. Thus, statism was to come, not by vote or by violence, but by slow rot—by a long process of evasion and epistemological corruption, leading to a fait accompli.” —Ayn Rand
“Unlike Republicans in most cases, the Democrats actually know they are lying. They just don’t care.” —Jonah Goldberg
"People assume that you won't intentionally lie to them because there's a taboo against lying in society. Therefore they are likely to give you the benefit of the doubt, even when you do lie to them. The more unbelievable your lie is, the more likely the people will think, "Gosh, that sounds too obviously unbelievable to be a lie, so maybe its not really a lie at all!" And what's more, the more certain you sound in your belief of your own lies, the more believable it becomes to others. That's why pathological liars are so believable: they actually believe in their own lies."- Adolf Hitler
"Conservatives who think progressives (the Anointed) are misinformed idealists will forever be blind-sided by the malice of the left-by the cynicism of those who pride themselves on principle, by the viciousness of those who champion sensitivity, by the intolerance of those who call themselves liberal, and by the ruthless disregard for the well-being of the downtrodden by those who preen themselves as social saints." - David Horowitz
"Liberals are uniformly defined by their hypocrisy and dissociation from reality. For example, the wealthiest U.S. senators -- among them the Clintons, Kerry, Gore, Kennedy, Rockefeller, Feinstein, et al., -- fancy themselves as defenders of the poor and advocate the redistribution of wealth, but they hoard enormous wealth for themselves and have never missed a meal." -Mark Alexander
"Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies." - Friedrich Nietzsche
"He who is unaware of his ignorance will be only misled by his knowledge." —Richard Whately
“More than unworkable, liberal ideas are preposterous, impossible—refuted by logic and human experience. That liberals continue to believe the impossible is due to their peculiar mental makeup. Liberals believe what they want to believe, the overwhelming weight of evidence notwithstanding. Once a liberal stops clinging to certain illusions central to his worldview, he stops being a liberal.” —Don Feder
"It isn't that Liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so much that just isn't so." - Ronald Reagan
“Politics is the best show in America. I love animals and I love politicians, and I like to watch both of ‘em play, either back home in their native state or after they’ve been captured and sent to a zoo—or Washington.” —Will Rogers
“A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.” - Theodore Roosevelt
“Liberalism, as an experiment against common sense, undermines every institution it touches, including financial ones. In the age of political correctness, the conservatism of the banking industry was bound to give way to mindless multiculturalism and Great Society babble. Tried-and-true lending principles were deemed illiberal and imprudent loans became a form of ‘progress.’ Whatever the area that falls under it—whether it is banking or education—liberalism’s regulatory regime consists of forcing people to adopt ideological goals which defy rationality: banks are told not to insist on such outmoded tests as good credit; schools are told not to insist on good test scores for admission. High standards across the culture have eroded under liberalism. Why not in banking too? Indeed, given the choice between economic decline and political correctness, liberals always choose the former. To preserve the kangaroo rat, they will cut jobs. To advance faddish global warming theory, they will undercut whole industries. Instead of bemoaning economic decline, they normally interpret it as a measure of enlightenment: that some worthy ideological goal, far more important than money, is slowing business down.” —George Neumayr
“[T]he American people are beginning to fit it all together. They’re beginning to realize that under the leadership of the liberals, that once-proud Democratic Party, a party of hope and affirmation, has become a party of negativism, a party whose leadership has changed it from the party of ‘yes’ to the party of ‘no’ —’no’ to the balanced budget amendment and the line-item veto, ‘no’ to holding down taxes and spending, ‘no’ to the death penalty and the school prayer amendment, ‘no’ to adequate defense spending and a Strategic Defense Initiative. The American people are beginning to understand that in all these ways the liberal leadership has been saying no to them... The public is beginning to realize that this election is a referendum on liberalism.” —Ronald Reagan
Comments related to the The Constitution and The Bill of Rights
The Constitution is a pretty simple document. It says that the federal government has very limited authority. And it goes on to say that every authority not granted to the federal government through it is reserved by the States and the people.” —J.J. Jackson
Should, hereafter, those incited by the lust of power and prompted by the Supineness or venality of their Constituents, overleap the known barriers of this Constitution and violate the unalienable rights of humanity: it will only serve to shew, that no compact among men (however provident in its construction and sacred in its ratification) can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no Wall of words, that no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other.” —George Washington, First Inaugural Address
“If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws—the first growing out of the last... A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.” —Alexander Hamilton
“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” —Barry Goldwater
“[A] wise and frugal government... shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” —Thomas Jefferson
“The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone...[T]he germ of dissolution of our federal government is in... the federal Judiciary.”...Thomas Jefferson
“Not everything you may care about is in the Constitution. It is a legal document that had compromises in it. What it says it says; what it doesn’t say it doesn’t say.” —Justice Antonin Scalia
"The opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch. ... The Constitution on this hypothesis is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please. ... It has long, however, been my opinion, and I have never shrunk from its expression...that the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal Judiciary; working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped."...Thomas Jefferson
“[T]here is not a syllable in the [Constitution] which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution, or which gives them any greater latitude in this respect than may be claimed by the courts of every State.” ...Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 81
“Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals—that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government—that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen’s protection against the government.” —Ayn Rand
“The Founding Fathers established a system which meant a radical break from that which preceded it. A written constitution would provide a permanent form of government, limited in scope, but effective in providing both liberty and order. Government was not to be a matter of self-appointed rulers, governing by whim or harsh ideology. It was not to be government by the strongest or for the few." - Ronald Reagan
“They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless.” —Thomas Jefferson
“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents...” —James Madison
"...we now have a Constitution in exile, its having becoming little more than a straw man as the courts have become increasingly politicized. To wit, in recent decisions, judicial activists on the Supreme Court have cited "national consensus" and "international law" as factors in their decisions." - Mark Alexander; "A 'Living Constitution' for a Dying Republic"
"Americans have long ago abandoned respect for the constitutional limitations placed on the federal government. Our elected representatives represent that disrespect." --economist Walter E. Williams
The first amendment
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” —John Adams (1798)
“The liberty enjoyed by the people of these states of worshiping Almighty God agreeably to their conscience, is not only among the choicest of their blessings, but also of their rights.” —George Washington
“If you assail the right of the people to honor God, then you assail the first principle of their self-government, which is that we are endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights leading to the consequence that the only form of government that is legitimate is a form of government that respects those God-given rights. No God, no republic. No God, no representation. No God, no due process. No God, no sanctity of individual rights, liberty, and life. The denial of God is an assault not only upon the people’s conscience, but upon their claim to have from God the right to govern themselves through representative institutions. The triumph of this false doctrine of separation, therefore, portends not only the persecution of our faith, but the destruction of our liberty.” —Alan Keyes
A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. - John F. Kennedy
“An opinion, right or wrong, can never constitute a moral offense, nor be in itself a moral obligation. It may be mistaken; it may involve an absurdity, or a contradiction. It is a truth, or it is an error; it can never be a crime or a virtue.” —Francis Wright
The Second Amendment
"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts [or words] with his life." —Robert Heinlein
“Arms are the only true badges of liberty. The possession of arms is the distinction of a free man from a slave.” —Andrew Fletcher
“Pick up a rifle and you change instantly from a subject to a citizen.” —Jeff Cooper
"A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity." - Sigmund Freud
“The Constitution shall never be construed... to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.” —Samuel Adams
“The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.” - Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story
“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms…disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage then to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man”. - Thomas Jefferson quoting Cesare Beccaria (Founder of Criminology)
“The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States.” —Noah Webster
If we give up part of that Constitution we give up part of our freedom and increase the chance that we will lose it all. I am not ready to take that risk. I believe that the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms must not be infringed if liberty in America is to survive.” —Ronald Reagan
“What better way to show our appreciation for the First Amendment than by exercising it to defend the Second Amendment?” —Alan Gottlieb
“The argument for gun control has always been based more on utopian visions than empirical facts. That, and the Left simply does not trust an armed citizenry.” —David Niedrauer
The Tenth Amendment
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.” —James Madison
“I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.’ To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, not longer susceptible of any definition.” —Thomas Jefferson“
The construction applied... to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate Congress a power... ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers.” —Thomas Jefferson
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." --Thomas Jefferson
“The Tenth Amendment was intended to confirm the understanding of the people at the time the Constitution was adopted, that powers not granted to the United States were reserved to the States or to the people. It added nothing to the instrument as originally ratified.’’ – United States v. Sprague, 282 U.S. 716, 733 (1931).
Comments related to patriotism and national security
"A pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer." - Theodore Roosevelt
“All of us denounce war—all of us consider it man’s greatest stupidity. And yet wars happen and they involve the most passionate lovers of peace because there are still barbarians in the world who set the price for peace at death or enslavement and the price is too high.” —Ronald Reagan
“Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.” —George Washington
“If anything, liberals are even more dangerous than Islamacists. The terrorist attacks with bombs and bullets. The liberal saps our will to resist. He rationalizes evil. In the name of civil liberties, he constantly seeks to undermine national security and make it impossible to safeguard our people from another 9/11.” —Don Feder“
“The bottom line is that Bill Clinton, the commander-in-chief, could not find the will to order the military into action against al Qaeda, and Bill Clinton, the head of the executive branch, could not find the will to order the CIA and FBI to act. No matter what the former president says on Fox, or anywhere else, that is his legacy in the war on terror.” —Byron York
“In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free.” —Edward Gibbon
“The moral immune system of this country has been weakened and attacked, and the AIDS virus is the perfect metaphor for it. The malignant neglect of the last twelve years has led to breakdown of our country's immune system, environmentally, culturally, politically, spiritually and physically.” - Barbara Streisand
"Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance." - Theodore Roosevelt
Comments related to centralized command and control (socialism)
“[A] wise and frugal government... shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” —Thomas Jefferson
"Every time that we try to lift a problem from our own shoulders, and shift that problem to the hands of the government, to the same extent we are sacrificing the liberties of our people." --John F. Kennedy
“The higher type of man clings to virtue, the lower type of man clings to material comfort. The higher type of man cherishes justice, the lower type of man cherishes the hope of favors to be received.” —Confucius
“The ordinary man is passive. Within a narrow circle, home life, and perhaps the trade unions or local politics, he feels himself master of his fate. But otherwise he simply lies down and lets things happen to him.” —George Orwell
“We can’t expect the American people to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism.” - Nikita Krushchev
“The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.” - Norman Thomas (Socialist Candidate for President of the U.S.)
"If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees." ex-president William J. Clinton
“It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care. If you are going to be in the system, you can’t choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK.” —John Edwards on his socialistic universal-healthcare plan
“The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth.” —Alexander Hamilton
“There is no greater force for economic growth than free markets, but markets work best with rules that promote our values, protect our workers and give all people a chance to succeed. Fairness doesn’t just happen. It requires the right government policies.” - Hillary Clinton (In other words, free markets work best when they’re not free Contrast this with the following.)
“Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.” —Milton Friedman
“I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty.” —Thomas Jefferson
“[I]f industry and labour are left to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those objects which are the most productive, and this in a more certain and direct manner than the wisdom of the most enlightened legislature could point out.” —James Madison
“The only freedom deserving the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.” —John Stuart Mill
“Free markets are simply millions upon millions of individual decision-makers, engaged in peaceable, voluntary exchange pursuing what they see in their best interests. People who denounce the free market and voluntary exchange, and are for control and coercion, believe they have more intelligence and superior wisdom to the masses. What’s more, they believe they’ve been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Of course, they have what they consider good reasons for doing so, but every tyrant that has ever existed has had what he believed were good reasons for restricting the liberty of others.” —Walter Williams
"It seems to be the threat to [the left's] egos that they hate. And nothing is more of a threat to their desire to run other people's lives than the free market and its defenders". - Thomas Sowell
"Perfect freedom is as necessary to the health and vigor of commerce as it is to the health and vigor of citizenship." - Patrick Henry
“I favor a policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the government. Every dollar that we save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form.” —Calvin Coolidge
“As a former Democrat, I can tell you [that]... back in 1936, Mr. Democrat himself, Al Smith, the great American, came before the American people and charged that the leadership of his party was taking the party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. And he walked away from his party, and he never returned to the day he died, because to this day, the leadership of that party has been taking that party... down the road in the image of the labor socialist party of England.” —Ronald Reagan
“We believe that human happiness requires freedom and that freedom requires limited government.” —Charles Murray
“The more one considers the matter, the clearer it becomes that redistribution is in effect far less a redistribution of free income from the richer to the poorer, as we imagined, than a redistribution of power from the individual to the State.” —Bertrand de Jouvenel
"Once the government becomes the supplier of people's needs, there is no limit to the needs that will be claimed as a basic right [sic]." —Lawrence Auster
“The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble, through the rivalry of schools and creeds that are anxious to obtain official recognition, and there is great danger that our people will lose our independence of thought and action which is the cause of much of our greatness, and sink into the helplessness of the Frenchman or German who expects his government to feed him when hungry, clothe him when naked, to prescribe when his child may be born and when he may die, and, in time, to regulate every act of humanity from the cradle to the tomb, including the manner in which he may seek future admission to paradise.” —Mark Twain
“We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.” —Sir Winston Churchill
“We need true tax reform that will at least make a start toward restoring for our children the American Dream that wealth is denied to no one, that each individual has the right to fly as high as his strength and ability will take him... But we cannot have such reform while our tax policy is engineered by people who view the tax as a means of achieving changes in our social structure.” —Ronald Reagan
“It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now... Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.” —John F. Kennedy
I believe it’s important to remind ourselves that in dealing with the economy we’re dealing with human creativity. This insight has represented the underpinning of our economic expansion. We cut tax rates, reduced government regulation, and restrained Federal spending; and we unleashed the creativity of individuals and businesses. We gave them freedom to create; to keep the rewards of their own risk-taking and hard work; and to reach for new, bold ideas.” - Ronald Reagan
Comments related to social engineering and 'social justice'
“[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.” —James Madison
"The vision of the left, full of envy and resentment, takes its worst toll on those at the bottom—whether black or white—who find in that paranoid vision an excuse for counterproductive and ultimately self-destructive attitudes and behavior." —Thomas Sowell
“It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success too. I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” —Barack Obama (Spread the wealth around = redistribution. Isn't it better to work to generate more wealth then to spread existing wealth around? - CVDG)
"If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without seeking to place on his fellow man a responsibility which is not theirs." --Theodore Roosevelt
"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too." --W. Somerset Maugham
“Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.” —Ayn Rand
“Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, ‘What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.’ But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector. Yet any time you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we’re denounced as being opposed to their humanitarian goals. It seems impossible to legitimately debate their solutions with the assumption that all of us share the desire to help the less fortunate. They tell us we’re always ‘against,’ never ‘for’ anything.” —Ronald Reagan
"Yet what the political left, even in democratic countries, share is the notion that knowledgeable and virtuous people like themselves have both a right and a duty to use the power of government to impose their superior knowledge and virtue on others.....The ignorance of people with Ph.D.s is still ignorance, the prejudices of educated elites are still prejudices, and for those with one percent of a society's knowledge to be dictating to those with the other 99 percent is still an absurdity". -Thomas Sowell
"If Americans think the only way to work together on social problems is through government, most will prefer government to giving up [charity/volunteering].” —Marvin Olasky
"State control is fundamentally bad because it denies people the power to choose and the opportunity to bear responsibility for their own actions. Conversely, privatization shrinks the power of the state and free enterprise enlarges the power of the people." —Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
"Liberalism increasingly seeks to deliver equality in the form of equal dependence of more and more people for more and more things on government." - George Will
“But to manipulate men, to propel them toward goals which you—the social reformers—see, but they may not, is to deny their human essence, to treat them as objects without wills of their own, and therefore to degrade them.” —Isaiah Berlin
"The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule." ---economist and philosopher Fredrich August von Hayek (1899-1992)
"Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honor, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means." —Charles Dickens
"When feelings and facts are in opposition, [some] people will find - or invent - a way to reconcile them". "...Mr. Festinger called [this] their 'cognitive dissonance'." "Because of 'cognitive dissonance' facts can be as malleable as clay." - Cynthia Crossen; WSJ, 4 Dec. 2006.
“Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.” - Thomas Jefferson
"History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.” — Douglas MacArthur
One word is notably absent from the liberal vocabulary: enough. For the liberal, there is hardly such a thing as ‘too much’ government. There is no point at which liberals say, ‘Well, we’ve done it. We’ve realized our dreams. We have all the government we need, and we should stop now.’ No, they always want more government. There is no such thing as enough government.” —Joseph Sobran
“[This] is a world in which facts always bow to feelings. What matters is not so much that you do good, but that you feel virtuous, or perhaps more to the point, are seen to be virtuous.” —Mona Charen
"A review of one of the many environmentalist books says that even if you can't do all you would like toward "living green," you can at least "congratulate yourself on taking small steps to improve the planet." That is what environmentalism — and much else on the political left's agenda — is really all about, self congratulation." -Thomas Sowell
"The charge I make against the present Executive administration is that in all their proceedings relating to these unfortunate men, instead of that Justice, which they were bound not less than this honorable Court itself to observe, they have substituted Sympathy!—sympathy with one of the parties in this conflict of justice, and antipathy to the other." John Quincy Adams to the Supreme Court, The Armistead Case
"Liberals seem to be motivated by compassion, but compassion without respect is patronizing." "...to treat huge swaths of able-bodied people as a dependent class-and a permanent dependant class at that-is to rob them of their dignity..."—Mona Charen, "Do-Gooders", pg. 119.
"True compassion for our fellow man requires that we examine not the intentions behind public policy but the effects of that policy."- Walter Williams
“Compassion in social policy almost always produces unfair results. Compassion for murderers allows them to keep their lives after taking the life of another. Compassion for minorities leads to affirmative action, which means that individuals who are not members of a designated minority will be treated unfairly. Compassion for immigrant children led to bilingual education, which subsequently prevented most of those children from advancing in American society. Compassion as the primary determinant of behavior is effective in personal life. In making public policy, it is a morally and socially destructive guideline. In fact, it is so bad that thinking people must conclude that its primary purpose is to enable policy makers who are guided by compassion to feel good about themselves [at the expense of others].” —Dennis Prager
Comments related to hypocrisy
“In politics, there are few skills more richly rewarded than the ability to misstate issues in a way that will sound plausible and attractive.” —Thomas Sowell ,e.g., “In order to get beyond race, you have to go to race. To suggest race neutrality as a remedy for racial discrimination is sophistry of the highest order.” —NAACP Chairman Julian Bond
“[I]n the post-civil-rights era, two competing ideas about discrimination, particularly racial discrimination, have arisen. The ‘conservative’ view is that discrimination is wrong, period. The ‘liberal’ view is that discriminatory means are acceptable in pursuing a noble end.” —James Taranto [see above Julian Bond]
“Liberals used to be the ones who argued that sending U.S. troops abroad was a small price to pay to stop genocide; now they argue that genocide is a small price to pay to bring U.S. troops home.” —Jonah Goldberg