May 2013
3 posts
3 tags
“Eliminating the public debt was part of his [Jefferson’s] ultimate desire...”
– Empire of Liberty, by Gordon S. Wood, p. 299
4 tags
“In America, unlike England, he [Madison] said, “the people, not the...”
– Empire of Liberty, by Gordon S. Wood, p. 270
“It was a maxim,” Hume wrote, “that in contriving any system of...”
– Novus Ordo Seclorum, by Forrest McDonald, p. 188
February 2013
1 post
2 tags
“In World War I, government policy had been so dramatic that it was like a great...”
– From ‘Coolidge’, by Amity Shlaes, 2013
October 2012
2 posts
6 tags
“In the struggle to abolish autocratic procedures in the conduct of education...”
– The Education of Free Men in American Democracy, 1941, published by the National Education Association of the United States, p. 111
4 tags
“In practice, friends of democracy have not rejected wholly the totalitarian...”
– The Education of Free Men in American Democracy, 1941, published by the National Education Association of the United States. p. 99
September 2012
3 posts
2 tags
“The entire Constitution was based on the notion that the American people stood...”
– “America’s Unwritten Constitution,” by Akhil Reed Amar, 2012, p. 37
1 tag
“Originalism is the constraint for judges, as short tenure is the main constraint...”
– Frank H. Easterbrook in ‘Originalism: A Quarter Century of Debate, ed. by Steven Calabresi, Regnery Publishing, 2007 p. 164
1 tag
“…originalism is the tool of the judicial branch — not because it is...”
– Frank H. Easterbrook in ‘Originalism: A Quarter Century of Debate, ed. by Steven Calabresi, Regnery Publishing, 2007 p. 162
July 2012
3 posts
3 tags
“What Americans are generally reluctant to do — and this is perhaps the...”
– Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in “Nomad: From Islam to America”, Free Press, 2010’ p. 124
7 tags
“In regard to domestic issues, Republicans saw Roosevelt and the Democrats as...”
– David B. Frisk, “If Not Us, Who? William Rusher, National Review and the Conservative Movement, 2012, p. 32
6 tags
“The English radical Whig historian Catharine Macaulay warned George Washington...”
– Gordon S. Wood, “Empire of Liberty”, 2009, p. 44
June 2012
6 posts
1 tag
“And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their...”
– Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia,
4 tags
“Whenever one person cannot be excluded from the benefits that others provide,...”
– Elinor Ostrom, ‘Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action’, 1990. Ostrom, the only woman to receive the Nobel prize in economics, died June 12, 2012
2 tags
“Rather than prohibit the exercise of specific powers, the early [state]...”
– Jack N. Rakove, Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution, 1996, p. 304
2 tags
“The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community...”
– Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist No. 71
2 tags
“Madison did not trust experience alone to give lawmakers the virtues they...”
– Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas other Making of the Constitution, by Jack N. Rakove, 1996, p. 220
4 tags
“Because many Federalist writers took popular aversion to taxation so seriously,...”
– Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution, by Jack N. Rakove, 1996, p. 194
May 2012
4 posts
3 tags
“…most framers agreed that the scope of national lawmaking would remain...”
– Original Meanings, by Jack N. Rakove, p. 179
6 tags
“There is no maxim in my opinion echo is more likely to be misapplied, and which...”
– Original Meanings, by Jack N. Rakove, 1996, p. 46
6 tags
“Whatever veneration might be entertained for the body of men who formed our...”
– Original Meanings, by Jack N. Rakove, 1996, p. 17
3 tags
“The voters had repeatedly been deceived by the chicanery and falsehoods of...”
– Gordon Wood in ‘The Creation of the American Republic,’ quoting John Adams circa 1790
April 2012
3 posts
2 tags
“The War on Poverty was less successful at reducing poverty than ignoring it was....”
– Jonah Goldberg, The Tyranny of Clichés, 2012, p. 70
“The threat to freedom is great, to be sure; but when the government takes action...”
– Leviathan, by Clint Bolick, Hoover Institution Press, 2004, p. 173
2 tags
“For the framers, the goal of federalism was not to glorify one level of...”
– Leviathan, by Clint Bolick, Hoover Institution Press, 2004, p. 29
February 2012
2 posts
2 tags
“Our strength grows out of our weakness. Not until we are pricked and stung, and...”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘On Compensation’
3 tags
“It is the child of avarice, the brother of inequity, the father of mischief.”
– George Washington on gambling, quoted by Ron Chernow in ‘Washington: A Life’
January 2012
5 posts
2 tags
“America has become a society in which the people are wise enough to choose their...”
– Mark Levin, ‘Ameritopia’, 2012
3 tags
“It is a Maxim, that in every Government, there must exist, Somewhere, a Supreme,...”
– Massachusetts General Court, January 1776, quoted in ‘Creation of the American Republic’, by Gordon S. Wood, 1969, p. 362
7 tags
“‘In Parliament,’ wrote Samuel Johnson in 1775, in a culmination of...”
– Gordon S. Wood, Creation of the American Republic, 1969, p. 349
2 tags
“Comedy is tragedy plus time.”
– Bob Newhart
4 tags
“Television: “a device that permits people who haven’t anything to do...”
– Fred Allen, comic radio star of the 1930s and ’40s
December 2011
1 post
4 tags
“There never was a time in which it was more necessary for you to inquire into...”
– June 1776, anonymous ‘To the People of Maryland’, quoted ‘Creation of the American Republic’, by Gordon S. Wood, p. 331
November 2011
3 posts
3 tags
“All authority is derived from the people at large, held only at their pleasure,...”
– Thomas Tudor Tucker, ‘Conciliatory Hints, Attempting by a Fair State of Matters, to Remove Party Prejudice,’ Charleston St. Gazette of S.C. 9/21/1786 p. 280 in ‘Creation of the American Republic’ by Gordon Wood.
4 tags
“…in all free States the Constitution is fixed, and as the supreme...”
– Samuel Adams, Massachusetts Circular Letter of 1768, quoted in Creation of the American Republic, by Gordon Wood p. 266
2 tags
“Men became concerned about the affairs of government because they participated...”
– Gordon Wood, ‘Creation of the American Republic’, quoted from Demophilus, Genuine Principles, p. 228
October 2011
1 post
4 tags
“This willingness of the individual to sacrifice his private interests for the...”
– Gordon S. Wood, Creation of the American Republic, 1969, p. 68
September 2011
7 posts
2 tags
“Dependence begets subservience. It suffocates the germ of virtue and prepares...”
– Thomas Jefferson, Writings II, p. 229, cited in The Irony of American History, by Reinhold Niebuhr, 1952, p. 31
3 tags
“I should therefore suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France until...”
– Edmund Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution
2 tags
“According to the liberal dogma men are excessively selfish because they lack the...”
– Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History, 1952, p. 19
2 tags
“Communism is a vivid object lesson in the monstrous consequences of moral...”
– Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History, 1952, p. 5
2 tags
“At times when there is capricious government intervention in business, and when...”
– Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson, 1948, p. 196
2 tags
“Paradoxical as it may seem to some, it is just as necessary to the health of a...”
– Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson, 1948, p. 106
2 tags
“When your money is taken by a thief, you get nothing in return. When your money...”
– Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson, 1948, p. 66
2 tags
“…it is highly improbable that the projects thought up by the bureaucrats...”
– Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson, 1948, p. 26
August 2011
16 posts
2 tags
“I still think the worst enemy of human hope is not brute facts, but men of...”
– Max Eastman, Reflections on the Failure of Socialism, 1955, p. 57
2 tags
“We can choose a system in which the amount and kind of goods produced is...”
– Max Eastman, Reflections on the Failure of Socialism, 1955, p. 31
2 tags
“But we are still beguiled by this other fairy tale: that a large group of...”
– Max Eastman, Reflections on the Failure of Socialism, 1955, p. 25
5 tags
“It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost at once—slavery has so...”
– ‘Civis Rusticus,’ quoting David Hume in reply to Geo. Mason’s Objections [to the proposed Constitution], Virginia Independent Chronicle, Jan. 30, 1788, in The Debate on the Constitution, ed. by Bernard Bailyn, p. 360
5 tags
“…the liberties of the people can never be lost, until they are lost to...”
– ‘Civis Rusticus,’ reply to Geo. Mason’s Objections [to the proposed Constitution], Virginia Independent Chronicle, Jan. 30, 1788, in The Debate on the Constitution, ed. by Bernard Bailyn, p. 357 