Subject	Date	Reason
Foundations	September 24, 2008	This Home Page.
ACLU Go there	August 18, 1920	The 19th Amendment is ratified. [1]         [2]           [3]
Arms: The 2nd Amendment Go there	April 19, 1775	When General Thomas Gage, under orders by King George III, attempted to disarm the colonists, we replied with "the shot heard round the world" and thus began our revolution. [1]         [2]           [3]
Christianity Go there	October 31, 1517	Martin Luther nailed a challenge to debate -his famous 95 theses- on the church door in Wittenberg setting off The Reformation. [1]         [2]           [3]
Governmental Reform Go there	December 19, 1998	President Clinton impeached. [1]         [2]           [3]
The Homosexual Agenda Go there	November 27, 1978	The Death of Harvey Milk. [1]         [2]           [3]
Islam         Go there	October 10, 732	Charles 'The Hammer" Martel's forces won the Battle of Tours. Gibbon and other traditional historians credit his victory with saving Christian Europe from Muslim domination. [1]         [2]           [3]
Letters from the Father Go there	October 30, 1909	Possible date of Twain's Letters from the Earth. [1]         [2]           [3]
Our Legal System Go there	February 2, 1790	Our Supreme Court convened for the 1st time. [1]         [2]           [3]
Political Rhetoric Go there	November 19, 1863	The Gettysburg Address. [1]         [2]           [3]
Pure Reason: Mathematics Go there	January 14, 1978	After demonstrating that some truths cannot be proved, the illustrious mathematician Kurt Gödel passed on. [1]         [2]           [3]
Reproductive Control Go there	January 22, 1973	Roe v. Wade decided. [1]         [2]           [3]
Reviews Go there	September 18, 2006	The God Delusion is published. [1]         [2]           [3]
Spirituality Go there	December 25, 4	Possible date of Christ's birth, in BC. [1]         [2]           [3]
Workings	January 1, 1	Earliest date available from this blog software.

George Washington

·         A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of friends.

·         Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.

·         As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.

·         Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation. It is better be alone than in bad company.

·         Bad seed is a robbery of the worst kind: for your pocket-book not only suffers by it, but your preparations are lost and a season passes away unimproved.

·         Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.

·         Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all.

·         Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder. ***

·         Friendship is a plant of slow growth and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.

·         Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

·         Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.

·         How soon we forget history... Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force. And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

·         I have no other view than to promote the public good, and am unambitious of honors not founded in the approbation of my Country.

·         I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.

·         I know of no pursuit in which more real and important services can be rendered to any country than by improving its agriculture, its breed of useful animals, and other branches of a husbandman's cares.

·         I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.

·         If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

·         If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.

·         It is far better to be alone, than to be in bad company.

·         It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world.

·         It is the child of avarice, the brother of iniquity, and the father of mischief. (what is?)

·         It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a Free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it.

·         It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it.

·         Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience.

·         Lenience will operate with greater force, in some instances than rigor. It is therefore my first wish to have all of my conduct distinguished by it.

·         Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the rest is in the hands of God.

·         Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. ***

·         Let your Discourse with Men of Business be Short and Comprehensive.

·         Let your heart feel for the afflictions and distress of everyone, and let your hand give in proportion to your purse.

·         Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.

·         Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government.

·         My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth.

·         My manner of living is plain and I do not mean to be put out of it. A glass of wine and a bit of mutton are always ready.

·         My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her.

·         My observation is that whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty... it is worse executed by two persons, and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein.

·         Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.

·         Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.

·         The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure.

·         The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character detests and despises it.

·         The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

·         The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves.

·         The tumultuous populace of large cities are ever to be dreaded. Their indiscriminate violence prostrates for the time all public authority, and its consequences are sometimes extensive and terrible.

·         The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good.

·         To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.

·         True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity, before it is entitled to the appellation.

·         War - An act of violence whose object is to constrain the enemy, to accomplish our will.

·         We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience.

·         When firearms go, all goes. We need them every hour.

·         When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen.

·         Worry is the interest paid by those who borrow trouble.

Abigail Adams

& Learning is not attained by chance. It must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.

Douglas Adams

[  Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. ***

George Matthew Adams

¤  In this life we get only those things for which we hunt, for which we strive, and for which we are willing to sacrifice.

Henry Adams

·         Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man.

John Quincy Adams

V  Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Phillip Adams

`  Unless you're willing to have a go, fail miserably, and have another go, success won't happen.

Samuel Adams

8  While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.

Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Y   Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else.

George Allen

X  Health, happiness and success depend upon the fighting spirit of each person. The big thing is not what happens to us in life - but what we do about what happens to us.

Mario Andretti - race car driver

%  Desire is the key to motivation, but it's the determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal - a commitment to excellence - that will enable you to attain the success you seek.

Anonymous

@      An Unfailing Success Plan: At each day's end write down the six most important things to do tomorrow; number them in order of importance, and then do them.

&         Everybody's a self-made man; but only the successful ones are ever willing to admit it.

Aristotle

& It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. ***

& Educated men are as much superior to uneducated men as the living are to the dead.

Isaac Asimov

V The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I've found it!), but 'That's funny - '.

Jane Austen

‘ A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.

Francis Bacon

& Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

& Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

& Knowledge is power.

Newton D. Baker

x   The man who graduates today and stops learning tomorrow is uneducated the day after.

Bruce Barton

E      Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things - I am tempted to think there are no little things.

E      Most successful men have not achieved their distinction by having some new talent or opportunity presented to them. They have developed the opportunity that was at hand.

Max Beerbohm 1872 - 1956

D  No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt.

James Bennis

R  Don't just learn the tricks of the trade. Learn the trade.

Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary

R   MAGPIE, n. A bird whose thievish disposition suggested to someone that it might be taught to talk. ***

: TELESCOPE, n. A device having a relation to the eye similar to that of the telephone to the ear, enabling distant objects to plague us with a multitude of needless details. Luckily it is unprovided with a bell summoning us to the sacrifice.

D. Blocher

w  Learning is not a spectator sport.

Siddhartha Gotoma, the BUDDHA

[  The thought manifests as the word;
The word manifests as the deed;
The deed develops into habit;
And habit hardens into character.
So watch the thought and its ways with care,
And let it spring from love Born out of concern for all beings.

Lady Burton

µ  Men are four:

He who knows not and knows not he knows not, he is a fool - shun him;

He who knows not and knows he knows not, he is simple - teach him;

He who knows and knows not he knows, he is asleep - wake him;

He who knows and knows he knows, he is wise - follow him!

Eddie Cantor

« It takes 20 years to make an overnight success.

Thomas Carlyle

& All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

& Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

Dale Carnegie

‘ Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get.

‘ The person who gets the farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.

Thomas Carruthers

¤  A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.

Hodding Carter

«  There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One is roots; the other, wings.

Joyce Cary

´  It is the tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn't know - and the less a man knows, the more sure he is he knows everything.

Charles Colton

w  Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.

Bill Clinton, former President

∞    It appears that some school officials, teachers, and parents have assumed that religious expression of any type is either inappropriate or forbidden altogether in public schools; however, nothing in the First Amendment converts our public schools into religion-free zones.

Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

[  To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short.

[  Learn avidly. Question repeatedly what you have learned. Analyze it carefully. Then put what you have learned into practice intelligently.

[  When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it - this is knowledge.

[  What I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. What I do, I understand.

[  He who learns but does not think is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.

[  The Confucian Analects: The determined scholar and the man of virtue will not seek to live at the expense of injuring their virtue. They will even sacrifice their lives to preserve their virtue complete.

John Cotton Dana

F Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.

W. Edwards Deming  

8  Learning is not compulsory but neither is survival.

Demosthenes

¢  Every advantage in the past is judged in the light of the final issue.

René Descartes

Ò  It is not enough to have a good mind.  The main thing is to use it well.

John Dewey

À  Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.

Benjamin Disraeli

¬  There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

¬  The secret of success is constancy to purpose.

William O. Douglas

E  Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.

Charles Du Bos

ö  The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.

John Foster Dulles  

[  The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith.  

William J. Durant

Ü  Woe to him who teaches men faster than they can learn.

Ü  A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential causes of ... decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her falling trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars. The political causes of decay were rooted in one fact - that increasing despotism destroyed the citizen's civic sense, and dried up statesmanship at its source. (The Story of Civilization, Vol. III, Caesar and Christ)

Dick Van Dyke

T        Women will never be as successful as men because they have no wives to advise them.

Thomas Edison

£  There is no substitute for hard work

£  Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration

£  Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work

Bob Edwards

4  A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a lot of ignorance is just as bad

Tyron Edwards

∞    To waken interest and kindle enthusiasm is the sure way to teach easily and successfully

Albert Einstein

§      Example isn't another way to teach, it is the only way to teach

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 - 1969)

V  Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in the blood of his followers and the sacrifices of his friends. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

X  A hero is no braver than an ordinary man but he is braver five minutes longer

X  What is excellent is permanent.

X  Self-trust is the first secret of success.

X  Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

X  For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?  "Boston" Stanza 15

X  To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the approbation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty;
To find the best in others;
To give of one's self;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition;
To have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived --
This is to have succeeded.

Epictetus

v  First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

B.C. Forbes

«  History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heart-breaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats.

Victor Frankl

§  The last of the human freedoms is to choose one's attitudes.

Benjamin Franklin

ÿ A democracy is two wolves and a small lamb voting on what to have for dinner. Freedom under a constitutional republic is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.

Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) GANDHI

/    Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever

—  The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within. ***

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

W  Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be.

W  Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago. ***

W  Nothing is as frightening as ignorance in action. 

W  Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough we must do.

W  None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.

Emma Goldman

T       If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.

St. Gregory the Great

`  Whatsoever one would understand what he hears, must hasten to put into practice what he has heard

Hamlet

] Act 2, scene ii

What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so

] Act 3, scene i

To be, or not to be,--that is the question:--

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them?--To die,--to sleep,--

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to,--'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd. To die,--to sleep;--

To sleep! perchance to dream:--ay, there's the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause: there's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,--

The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns,--puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;

And enterprises of great pith and moment,

With this regard, their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action...

Piet Hein

ª      The road to wisdom? Well, it's plain and simple to express: Err and err and err again but less and less and less

C. A. Helvetius

·         Education makes us what we are.

Patrick Henry

N Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

Heraclitus

w  You can't step twice into the same river

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

B He has half the deed done who has made a beginning. 

B Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.

B One's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.

B Some people are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good. ***

B The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort.

B A moment's insight is sometimes worth a lifetime's experience.

B It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.

B A page of history is worth a volume of logic.

Homilies 

N  By Confederate (Bethesda, MD) June 13, 2005: A fellow I once knew pulled out a giant fold-out knife and laid it on the table so I could get a good look at it. Then he told me about two guys who were following him one night in a bad section of D.C. He turned and faced them, pulling out the knife and letting them see its glittering blade before he palmed it. "Yeah, well what would you have done if they'd pulled out knives of their own and come after you?" He shrugged and replied, "I would have shot them."

Horace

-  Life grants nothing to us mortals without hard work

I don't know

<       All learning begins with the simple phrase, "I don't know"

William James (1842 - 1910)

x   I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are impossible.

Thomas Jefferson

~  A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

~  I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.

Job 28:12

G   But where shall wisdom be found?  And where is the place of understanding?

Samuel Johnson

W   A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

W   What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

Effie Jones

}  Failing to plan is a plan to fail

John Maynard Keynes

ÿ There is no harm in being sometimes wrong - especially if one is promptly found out

Sören Kierkegaard

·         Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards

Martin Luther King Jr.

†  In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

Rudyard Kipling (Elephant's Child)

<  I keep six honest serving men

(They taught me all I knew)

Their names are What and Why and When

And How and Where and Who

Grenville Kleiser

O      There are fine things which you mean to do some day, under what you think will be more favorable circumstances.

O      But the only time that is surely yours is the present, hence

O      this is the time to speak the word of appreciation and sympathy,

O      to do the generous deed, to forgive the fault of a thoughtless friend, to sacrifice self a little more for others.

O      Today is the day in which to express your noblest qualities of mind and heart,

O      to do at least one worthy thing which you have long postponed, and to

O      use your God-given abilities for the enrichment of someone less fortunate...

O      The present is yours...

Abraham Lincoln

R  America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

John Locke

X The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it

Vincent T. Lombardi

¬  The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will.

The Lord:

Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?

Martin Luther (1483 - 1546)

V  Here stand I. I can do no other.

James Madison U.S. President

'         I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

Somerset Maugham

—  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.

Roger D. McCrath (History Prof at the UCLA)

E  Nellie Cashman, who spent time in nearly every camp (including Bodie) from Mex­ico to Alaska, was asked shortly before she died if she had ever feared for her virtue while trekking from one strike to another and living in nearly all-male camps. She replied: "Bless your soul, no! I never have had a word said to me out of the way. The 'boys' would sure see to it that anyone who ever offered to insult me could never be able to repeat the offense."

H. L. Mencken

L  The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.

Michelangelo

'  If people only know how hard I work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all

John Stuart Mill

N  War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.

John Milton

F    None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. ***

F    Long is the way and hard, that out of hell leads up to light.

George Orwell

N  Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past

N  If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear

N  We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm

N  To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle

N  Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act

N  The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it

N  "In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it." 'Syme', a character from Orwell's 1984

Plutarch

E      For water continually dropping will wear hard rocks hollow

Edgar Allen Poe

Y  To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.

Y  I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.

Polonius

] Act 1, scene iii

The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay'd for. There; my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man

Marcel Proust

v  The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes

Proverbs

O Chinese: Better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness

O Latin: He who walks with the lame learns how to limp. ***

O Proverbs 12:1. To learn, you must want to be taught

O Turkish: If you speak the truth, have a foot in the stirrup

Quintilian

® That laughter costs too much which is purchased by the sacrifice of decency.

Ayn Rand (1905 - 1982), Atlas Shrugged

3  Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other

3  The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see

Ronald Reagan

w  This country has lost control of its borders, and no country can sustain that kind of position. (October 19, 1983)

Carl Rogers

% The only kind of learning which significantly influences behavior is self-discovered or self-appropriated learning - truth that has been assimilated in experience

Theodore Roosevelt

3   What I am to be, I am now becoming

John Ruskin

W   Which of us ... is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest - and for what pay?  Who is to do the pleasant and clean work, and for what pay?

Bertrand Arthur William Russell

i    Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.

i    Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin, more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man

Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline

Ñ  The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage.

George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

J  Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.

Arthur Schopenhauer  

"      Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world

Seneca

@      Even while they teach, men learn

Frederick Edwin Smith, Lord Birkenhead

w  Meet success like a gentleman and disaster like a man

Herbert Spencer

¬   Education has for its object the formation of character

Joseph Stalin

} Death solves everything: no man, no problem.

Henry David Thoreau

˜  I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.

˜  I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. ***

˜  Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they are written.

Alvin Toffler

h The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn

Mark Twain

W When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained. ***

W The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.

W There is nothing training cannot do. Nothing is above its reach. It can turn bad morals to good; it can destroy bad principles and recreate good ones; it can lift men to angelship.

W It is noble to be good, and it is nobler to teach others to be good -- and less trouble!

W It is easier to stay out than to get out. 

W It is by the goodness of God that we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

W Golf is a good walk spoiled.

W The newspaper that obstructs the law on a trivial pretext, for money's sake, is a dangerous enemy to the public weal.
That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.  

W There is nothing you can say in answer to a compliment. I have been complimented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass me--I always feel that they have not said enough.

Lao Tzu

[  A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step

Voltaire

3  So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.

William Arthur Ward

5  The mediocre teacher tells

The good teacher explains

The superior teacher demonstrates

The great teacher inspires

Thomas J. Watson

F  Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that's where you will find success.

Walt Whitman. "Song of Myself"

¹      Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

John P. Zenger

3  No nation ancient or modern ever lost the liberty of freely speaking, writing, or publishing their sentiments, but forthwith lost their liberty in general and became slaves.

Zig Ziglar

À  What you get by reaching your destination is not nearly as important as what you will become by reaching your destination

À  The most practical, beautiful, workable philosophy in the world won't work - if you won't

Need Verification:

Stuart Ewen (Professor and Chairman of the Department of Film and Media Studies at Hunter College, New York. He is also a Professor in the Ph.D. Programs in History and in Sociology at the City University of New York Graduate Center):

·         Market force has become the value system - and we have come to the point where advertising has become the primary mode of public address; the term consumer has become a substitute for the word citizen - and the truth is that which sells.

MoveOn.org leader referring to the Democratic Party.

·         "Now it's our party! We bought it, we own it!"

George Soros, MoveOn.org's billionaire benefactor

·         American supremacy is the greatest threat to the world today. ***

Checked the web thoroughly and closest I found was a transcript of CNN Crossfire of Aired May 31, 2004 - 16:30   ET http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0405/31/cf.00.html   which says " ...Soros explained to 'The Washington Post' this fall ... Soros went on to compare the president of the United States to the Nazis. And then he said something even more offensive. Soros described the United States as -- quote - 'a danger to the world.'"

20080831

Omar Ahmad, Co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.

Theodore Roosevelt

In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people. (January 3, 1919)

Pope Benedict XVI, quoting 14th-century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus

Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.

Dawkins presents this book as a scientific work, written as a scientist.  Yet the domain of science is the natural world, not a supernatural one.  Science has nothing meaningful to say, now and for the foreseeable future, in the domain of theology.  A scientist would know this.  Still, to be fair, Dawkins was trained as a Zoologist who earned a D.Sc. (a curious scientific degree that seems to be left over from the Enlightenment), and his field is not constrained by the rigors of logic and mathematics, as is physics, chemistry, cosmology, etc.  That's why some say it's not properly called a science at all; rather a craft.  I loved "The Selfish Gene", but now I find myself embarrassed for him.

What little science there is in this book comes from the study of animals.  To Dawkins, man is merely an extremely sophisticated animal endowed only with more; more intelligence, more language, more tools, etc.  To those who believe in God, man is not merely an animal for he is endowed with a soul.  Dawkins may be right that we have no souls and are only animals, but this is not a scientific fact; it can't even become a valid scientific question.  In any event, knowledge of the animal kingdom can only take one so far when it's applied to humans.

Looking underneath Dawkins' pseudoscience, I found a pervasive sentiment; rebellion.  To be a Christian, I must acknowledge that I fall short of what's required of me by God; I am a sinner.  If I can't tolerate the idea of being a sinner, I have only 2 choices.  One, do no sin, which is difficult if not impossible.  Or, reject God and thereby reject the rules which label me a sinner.  Once there is no such thing as sin, there can be no sinner.  This is an atheist's freedom.  And their power?  Once there is no God, there can be no revelation, leaving it to the individual atheist to be the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong in the universe.  This is, of course, a violation of the 1^st commandment:  'I am the Lord God.  Not you.'  Now that's a lot of freedom, and a lot of power; it's no wonder folks like Dawkins find atheism so seductive.

Intellectually, atheism is one answer to a perennial question; if not God, what?  There is no demonstrably correct answer to this question so it ends up as a matter of opinion, or perhaps choice. 

Historically, you won't find many atheistic cultures; they don't seem to last.  The few that have tried it barley made it a century or 2.  In Dawkins' terms, atheism seems to be selected against, and the route they take is pretty clear:  Since there is no God, there can be no 'personal' afterlife, so the greatest possible evil to befall a person is death.  Once a society no longer holds values worth dying for, it's hard for its members to see why they should sacrifice anything at all.  And why should they?  In those utterly human moments when we ask, "Is this all there is?", the atheist's answer is "There is nothing more than you.  So yes, this is all there is."  Not a very satisfying answer, is it?

Anyway, this book is a lucid presentation of Dawkins' beliefs, and as such is an excellent read.  Just don't expect too much enlightenment from it, and don't expect any science.

"Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."  George Washington

Fun Facts to know and share:

From 2001 thru 2003, while ORACLE's stock lost %54 of its value, CEO Larry Ellison's total compensation was $746,748,000.

As of June 30, 2006, there was $36,593,331,930 worth of US coins in circulation.

In 2005, when the GNP was $12.4 trillion, the Chicago Board of Trade traded over $45,000,000,000,000 ($45 trillion) worth of Federal Government Debt.

In my Spanish download there are 16 different vocabulary lists with around 14 words per list; lists such as Counting Numbers, Polite Conversation, and Meeting and Greeting.  The new vocabulary is presented via 5 "Learning Modes":  Review It; Recognize It; Know It; Produce It; and Own It.  Following this sequence worked pretty well for me.  I also got other languages, Latin and German, and more are available from the vendor; all free.  If you upgrade to the commercial version for $45 - $55, you'll get quite a bit more functionality, including recording you saying the word and comparing your pronunciation to the native's.  For a Franklin, you'll get BYKI and 4 other apps.   c|net Download  :  Vendor's site   

Joe proposed the following contract which is to be signed by anyone running for Congress or Pres/VicePres.  If they don't sign it, you don't vote for them.

1. Ban congressmen, senators, and White House officials from lobbying for 5 years.
2. Freeze the pay of congressmen, senators, and White House officials until the federal budget is balanced.  This includes cost-of-living adjustments!
3. Force political candidates to immediately scan and post all campaign contributions on their campaign website.  Failure to do so results in criminal penalties.
4. Pass term limits now! Since the House of Representatives authorized the federal spending, limit House members to three terms (six years).
5. Make Congress and every Washington bureaucracy undergo an independent, professional audit, line by line, program by program every four years.
6. Pass a constitutional amendment requiring Washington to balance the budget every year except when Congress passes a resolution declaring a national emergency.
7. Create a federal rainy-day fund that would set aside ½ of 1% of all tax receipts each year for national, state and local emergencies.
8. Reenact pay-as-you-go rules that would require Congress to offset new spending programs and tax cuts with spending cuts from other programs.
9. Reinstitute congressional spending caps that would force congressmen or senators to live within their previous spending projections.  These caps will not be broken unless Congress passed a separate resolution declaring a national emergency as described in #6.
10. Pass a new American tax code written by a bipartisan panel of budget experts instead of the lobbyist groups who regularly carve out special-interest deductions and greatly simplify the tax system.

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." Douglas Adams

"Few men have [the] virtue to withstand the highest bidder." George Washington

I think I would have fit the label of your garden variety 'macho heterosexual teenager' (this was before the word "gay" became popularized) back then, at least as far as sex was concerned.  I admit it; I definitely had a prurient interest in taking that shower.

Still, I don't think the girls would have let me shower with them.  And if they couldn't get rid of me, I don't think they would have undressed, let alone showered.

Here's something that might have gone through the mind of some of those girls:  "Getting undressed and showering in front of others is kind of a personal thing for me.  The last thing I need is for some oversexed boy staring at me like I'm a hunk of meat. Or worse yet, looking at me and thinking about ... well, you know".

In fact, I don't really believe that boys and girls are required to shower separately simply because of their different body parts. Well, a little maybe.  Today, I think one would say that those girls didn't want to be sexually harassed, or exposed to an exploitive, objectifying, demeaning environment.  Even today I don't think you could get unanimous approval from all the naked women in their locker room shower to let a few horny males in.  I wonder, could one find a shower where 20% of the women agreed to shower with the boys?

Boys. Lots has been said about boys, or rather, young men.  e.g. On average, they have sexual relations with more partners than woman do.  Heck, didn't Wilt Chamberlain claim thousands of partners?  They think about sex, on the average, more often women.  Many teenage males claim to have uncontrollable erections at unpredictable times.  At least that's how I remember it.  Males are much more willing to have sex without intimacy than women.  Don't They say "any port in a storm"?  I heard an old wise man say: "The key to a good relationship?  She gives him sex, and he gives her intimacy".  Even gay males are said to have a higher than average number of partners. (I wonder if this sentence is true?  I wonder if what that old man said is true?)

Here's one way all the above can be put together, although only one way out of many:

When a homosexual man takes a shower with hetrosexual men, will it be like the above?  After all, I would expect the nude male body to be viewed by homosexual men in an analogous way.  I could be wrong about this.  Might not the hetrosexual men feel a similar objectifying atmosphere?  Might they also feel they have the right to shower in a, shall we say, lust-free environment?

If this is true, it would pose quite a dilemma, wouldn't it?  If homosexual men needed approval to shower with hetrosexual men and didn't get it, would they be restricted to showering only with other homosexual men?  If so, what if one of those homosexual men said they would like to shower in a lust-free environment?  Would they then have to shower alone, one at a time?

What a thought!  A homosexual man's 'natural' sexual desires possibly creating a hostile environment.  What will They think of next?

From the Merriam-Webster online dictionary at www.m-w.com/dictionary:

Main Entry: anal·o·gy
Function: noun
1 : inference that if two or more things agree with one another in some respects they will probably agree in others

Bumper stickers that caught my eye:

"Vegetables are not food.  Vegetables are what food eats".

 

"Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most".

RE: The 2007 Assembly's decision regarding Ordained/Ordaining practicing homosexuals

Dear Leaders,

I have spent many hours at our website, elca.org, researching our Church's thoughts and actions regarding Ordained/Ordaining practicing homosexuals.  Our most recent position is the result of the 2007 assembly which states:

Assembly Encourages Restraint in Discipline of Congregations, Leaders

The Churchwide [sic] Assembly made no changes to ELCA standards for professional leaders, declining proposals that suggested specific policy changes. By a vote of 538 to 431, the assembly asked its synods and bishops to 'refrain from or demonstrate restraint in disciplining' people and congregations that call otherwise-qualified candidates in mutual, chaste and faithful committed same-gender relationships, and it called for restraint in disciplining rostered leaders in committed same-gender relationships. The proposal was adopted as a substitute for a recommendation of the Memorials Committee.

Following the decision, Hanson said, "These are words of counsel. They are not words that change the standards of the church. They reflect the mind of this assembly as it seeks to give counsel to the leaders of this church."

I am sorry to say that I think Presiding Bishop Hanson is dissembling (see above - ...not words that change...); the previous standards of the Church called for the removal of practicing homosexuals from all official positions, whereas our current position is to condone (as in 'refraining from disciplining') homosexual behavior among our Leaders.

By the various votes is clear that our church is deeply divided on this issue and that an official position of disciplining those engaged in homosexual behavior might fracture our church as it has the Anglican/Episcopal Church.  I suspect that at least some of you Leaders wish to prevent this at all costs; some of you see it as a Civil Rights issue; some of you see it as tolerance, or acceptance, of diversity; some of you see it as the loving inclusion of practicing homosexuals into the life of the Church; and so on...  Some may even see it as a financial issue in terms of the potential lost revenue if thousands leave our Church.  The rest of you see it as I do; a Sodom and Gomorrah-esque rejection of God.

By accepting practicing homosexuals as Ordained Priests, you are declaring them to be approved role-models worthy of emulation by all in our congregations.

In my opinion, Protestantism had come to a point analogous to that of Roman Catholicism right before Luther began the Reformation, where the common Christian could no longer support the corrupt institution the Church had become.  The current state of extreme and pervasive secularism and licentiousness in America has put a tremendous strain on Christianity, and those religious institutions too attached to this world will fail in their commitment to Christ and become ensnared by that world.

While we may all, hopefully, "love the sinner", please let those that also 'love the sin' go; let them leave our church for one of their own.  Let our church stand fast in 'hating the sin'.

"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." John Milton

"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor." Henry David Thoreau

He who walks with the lame learns how to limp. - Latin Proverb

Bumper Sticker that caught my eye:

     "If Bush is the answer, it must have been a STUPID question."

Let x = 0.999... (to ∞)

Now we can multiply this equation by 10 to get

10x = 9.999... (to ∞)

Now we have two equations and so far OK.  But let's subtract them:

     10x  = 9.999...

-      x   = 0.999...

________________

        9x = 9.0  which of course simplifies to x = 1.

And "1" is not the number I started with, which was 0.999... (to ∞) !!!

Or does 1 really equal the first number after all: 1 = 0.999... ???

Infinity is a mischievous concept and there's no telling what it's up to!

Quote

"Don't just learn the tricks of the trade. Learn the trade." James Bennis

Fun Facts to Know and Share

111,111,111  X  111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

Bumper Stickers that caught my eye

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

What if the hokey pokey is really what it's all about?

Problem 1:

An advertisement for an orange drink claims that the drink contains 10% orange juice. How much pure orange juice would have to be added to 5 quarts of the drink to obtain a mixture containing 40% orange juice?

Solution 1:

Hint #1:

a)  Read and think about the word problem, in English, until you are satisfied you understand it.

b)   Define your Lets.  1-What don't you know? / What are they asking you to find?

c)  What units is the unknown in?

Let X = quarts of pure OJ to be added

Hint #2:

a)  What did we start with?  How much did we start with?  How do you know this?

b)   We start with 5 quarts of orange drink, which is 10% OJ, or [0.10(5)] quarts of OJ.

c)  What must we end with?  How much must we end with? How do you know this?

d) We must end with a volume of the initial 5 quarts AND the quarts added, or (5 + X) quarts of orange drink.

The volume of orange drink we end up with must be 40% OJ,

 \is the symbol used for "therefore".

\ Initial quarts + pure quarts added = result, or better yet; Initial OJ + Pure OJ = Final OJ

0.10(5) + 1.00(X) = 0.40(5 + X)

The rest is left as an exercise for the reader.

Problem 2:

A cask is filled with 45 gallons of wine. Nine gallons are removed and the cask is refilled with water. The nine gallons of the mixture are removed and the cask is again refilled with water. What is the ratio of water to wine in the final mixture?

Solution 2:

Hint #1:

a)  Our "Let", or more appropriately, our "Unknown Variable Assignment", comes straight from the question because it asks "What is the ratio ...".

b)   There are 3 significant bits of information here: 1) A volume (gallons) of final mixture, which is 2) A final gallons of water, and 3) A final gallons of wine.  Even though these are 3 things, if we know any 2 of them, we can calculate the 3^rd. 

c)  Out of the above 3, experience and thought direct me to assign unknown variables to final gallons of pure wine and pure water.

Let X = gallons of pure water in final mixture

Let Y = gallons of pure wine in final mixture

Hint #2:

a)  This is what I consider a "Trick" question because there's something funny about it.  There are actually 2 mixtures being made instead of our usual 1.

b)   We can't make the (2^nd) final mixture until after we've made the 1^st mixture.

c)  Here's an English description of what is going on, and what needs to be going on. There are 5 steps:

d) 1) We start with 45 gallons of pure wine. 

e)  2) We remove 9 gallons of pure wine.

f)  3) We add 9 gallons of water, creating mixture #1.

g) 4) We remove 9 gallons of mixture #1. 

h)   5) We add 9 gallons of water.

1^st Mixture:

45   is the gallons of wine we start with.

 9    is the gallons of wine we remove.

 9    is the gallons of water we add.

\ 36 gallons wine / 9 gallons water = ratio of wine to water in mixture #1

This means that for every gallon of mixture #1 we remove, we are removing 4 parts wine and 1 part water; i.e. 80% wine and 20% water.

\ 0.80(9) is the gallons of wine removed from mixture #1

2^nd and final mixture.

45   is the gallons of mixture #1 we start with.

 9    is the gallons of mixture #1 we remove.

 9    is the gallons of water we add.

Now we can make our 1^st equation: Initial wine - wine removed - wine in mixture #1 we removed = wine in final fluid.

\ Y = 45 initial gallons wine - 9 gallons wine - 0.80(9) gallons wine

The rest is left as an exercise for the reader.

• 49% of pregnancies among American women are unintended; 1/2 of these are terminated by abortion.  24% of all pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) end in abortion.
• Each year, 2 out of every 100 women aged 15-44 have an abortion; 48% of them have had at least one previous abortion.
• 54% of women having abortions used a contraceptive method during the month they became pregnant. 76% of pill users and 49% of condom users reported using the methods inconsistently, while 13% of pill users and 14% of condom users reported correct use.
• The risk of death associated with childbirth is about 11 times as high as that associated with abortion.

According to the American Medical Association:

The term 'partial birth abortion' is not a medical term. The AMA will use the term "intact dilatation and extraction" (or intact D&X) to refer to a specific procedure comprised of the following elements: deliberate dilatation of the cervix, usually over a sequence of days; instrumental or manual conversion of the fetus to a footling breech; breech extraction of the body excepting the head; and partial evacuation of the intracranial contents of the fetus to effect vaginal delivery of a dead but otherwise intact fetus. This procedure is distinct from dilatation and evacuation (D&E) procedures more commonly used to induce abortion after the first trimester.

According to Warren M. Hern, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D. testifying before the Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate 17 November 1995:

While about 1% of all abortions are performed after about 20 weeks of pregnancy, only about .03%, or fewer than 500, are performed after 26 weeks. The majority of these are now performed by me or one of my medical colleagues. These abortions are almost always performed for the most tragic reasons of severe fetal anomaly, genetic disorder, or immediate risk to the woman's life. They are not performed for frivolous reasons, contrary to statements by those opposed to abortion.

According to gentlebirth.org, on Nov. 29, 2005, the LA Times published an article by Stephanie Simon called "Offering Abortion, Rebirth" in the "Start Page: A.1 Section: Main News; Part A; National Desk".  In order to read the actual article I'd have to pay the LA Times, so instead I'll rely on this extract posted in the Midwife Archives:

According to Dr. William F. Harrison, a diplomate [sic] of the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology:

Approximately 1 in 2000 fetuses develop hydrocephalus while in the womb.  Usually not discovered until LATE in the second trimester, it is not unusual for the fetal head to be as large as 50 centimeters (nearly 20 inches) in diameter and may contain ... close to two gallons ... of cerebrospinal fluid.  (The average *adult* skull is about 7 to 8" in diameter.)

Dr. Harrison says the partial birth and the "draining" of the fetus' skull is actually drawing off of this fluid from the brain area of the fetus. The collapsing of the fetal skull is to allow the removal without the brutal rupturing of a woman's uterine passage or necessitating a classic cesarean section that poses its own dangers to a woman and any future pregnancies. The fetus with severe hydrocephalus cannot live and we wish someone would let people like Ralph Reed, Orin Hatch, Pat Robertson, and Pope John Paul II know that they are condemning women to death for no reason - no reason except their damned puny male egos.

Approximately 500 women face this procedure each year. Mild to moderate hydrocephalus can be sometimes be treated in utero and the fetus saved, and some very mild cases can be delivered and treated after birth. Those which have advanced or severe hydrocephalus cannot. Without the "partial birth" abortions, their births can easily kill their mothers with no chance of fetal survival.

"The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within." Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) GANDHI

Bumper stickers that caught my eye:

"I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it."

"Ever stop to think and forget to start again?"

Fun Facts to know and share:

As cowboys sat around in saloons in the latter part of the 19^th century, they often played poker.  To reduce cheating, the deal would change hands and the next in line to deal would be given a marker.  This marker was often a knife which often had buck-horn handles; hence the marker becoming known as a buck. When the dealer's turn was done he 'passed the buck'.  Silver dollars were later used as markers and this is probably the origin of the use of buck as a slang term for dollar.

On the surface, I find the justifications for hate crime legislation pretty convincing.  After all, the legal concept of mens rea -- literally 'guilty mind'; usually used synonymously with "intent" -- has been a fixture in western jurisprudence for a long, long time, and the person committing a hate crime ^[2] certainly intends to commit a crime. (And 'criminal intent' is required to be culpable, therefore punishable; the law often forgives 'accidents'.) These particular crimes are also said to produce greater suffering for the victim, ^[3] as well as harm the victim's community. ^[4] 

On the web I have found a plethora of sites defending, justifying and legitimizing hate crime legislation, ^[5] and a dearth of sites challenging this legislation. ^[6]  Since so many states have passed hate crime legislation and so many Supreme Courts have upheld them, ^[7] maybe the disparity between the number of sites, Pro and Con, can be explained because the issue has been debated enough and is now closed; hate crime legislation won.

This may be the case with our legal system, yet many claim that system has become so radicalized, its opinion doesn't count for much anymore.  As evidence, they point to the fact that the General Counsel for the ACLU - from 1973-1980 - is now sitting on the Supreme Court of the United States --  Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I wonder ... With such credentials, if Justice Ginsburg isn't legitimately labeled a radical, who in America could be?  Or have we moved so far that the ACLU is no longer radical; is now so much closer to the middle of the road as to be only liberal?

Here's an amusing twist: vegetable hate crimes.  (Is it interesting that the ACLU seems to be defending the hatred of vegetables while working to criminalize the hatred of certain people?)

If you look into the Pros & Cons of hate crime legislation and the judicial rulings surrounding them, you will find lots of references to the perpetrator's motive and motivation, as well as what the perpetrator intends to do, -- their intention; and how these apply to the law.  If you then look up the definitions of these words, you'll find reference to the words: believe and belief; thought and think; opinion and of course hate.

Take note of the subtle, esoteric similarities and differences in the definitions of these words.  For instance:

• The noun thought is defined as: 1a) the action or process of thinking; and 2b) the power to imagine.  It is also defined as: 3b) a developed intention or plan.
• The verb think is defined as: 1) to form or have in the mind; 3a) to have as an opinion; 4a) to reflect on.  It is also defined as: 2) to have as an intention.
• The verb intend is defines as: 4a) to have in mind as a purpose or goal.

Notice particularly that to intend (mens rea) is to "have in mind", and to "have in the mind" is to think. 

Can the case be made that the esoteric reasoning surrounding the legitimization of hate crime legislation is mere sophistry?  Whatever your answer to this question, it must be admitted that stating in public something like: "I hate XXXXXs"; ^[8] or "I enjoy it when a XXXXX is hurt"; or "I like to hurt XXXXXs"; or "I want to hurt XXXXXs"; is constitutionally protected.  It must also be admitted that thinking and/or announcing these thoughts while committing a crime against a XXXXX is now illegal.

Maybe the proponents of hate crime legislation ^[9] are correct (a lot of good minds think so).  That despite the possible confusion of terms, hate crime legislation does not make the thinking, or speaking, of a thought illegal.  What is clear is that reasonable folks of goodwill disagree regarding this claim. 

But the larger question is why our lawmakers and courts are so willing to tread so close to the line ^[10] of making certain thoughts ^[11] illegal, if they haven't crossed it already? ^[12] Our Supreme Court has often avoided entanglement in certain issues because they feel they are not properly involved in such areas or not competent as a body to render judgments in some areas.  Is the freedom of thought one such area?   In other areas, the court said there was a wall of separation which so many deem so important.  Why is the line between criminalizing behavior and criminalizing thought practically impossible to see and comparatively so unimportant?

With the line between thought and action so blurry, how will one know when one has crossed it?  Heck, maybe it won't even matter in our politically correct times:

"In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be nowords in which to express it". Syme; one of Big Brother's henchmen from Orwell's 1984

 

Notes:

[1] On September 13, 1994, the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 was amended, to make hate crimes illegal, via the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (H.R.3355, Public Law No: 103-322) to include the following:

SEC. 280003. DIRECTION TO UNITED STATES SENTENCING COMMISSION REGARDING SENTENCING ENHANCEMENTS FOR HATE CRIMES.

(a) DEFINITION- In this section, `hate crime' means a crime in which the defendant intentionally selects a victim, or in the case of a property crime, the property that is the object of the crime, because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual orientation of any person.

(b) SENTENCING ENHANCEMENT- Pursuant to section 994 of title 28, United States Code, the United States Sentencing Commission shall promulgate guidelines or amend existing guidelines to provide sentencing enhancements of not less than 3 offense levels for offenses that the finder of fact at trial determines beyond a reasonable doubt are hate crimes. In carrying out this section, the United States Sentencing Commission shall ensure that there is reasonable consistency with other guidelines, avoid duplicative punishments for substantially the same offense, and take into account any mitigating circumstances that might justify exceptions.

[2] According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Hate Crime Statistics for 2004, there were 7,649 criminal hate crime incidents, out of 1,367,009 violent crimes and 10,328,255 property crimes; 0.065% of crimes committed in 2004 were hate crimes.    In perspective, according to the National Safety Council, or NSC, in 2003 there were 4,500 accidental workplace fatalities and 13,900 fatalities due to accidental poisoning.  I wonder how many of the hate crimes were fatal to the victim?

[3] In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, the American Psychological Association, or APA, said:

"... the experience of a serious hate crime has more severe psychological ramifications for the victim than a random crime of similar severity ..."

[4] According to the Anti-Defamation League, or ADL,

"Hate crimes demand a priority response because of their special emotional and psychological impact on the victim and the victim's community."

[5] Some interesting reading supporting hate crime legislation, soon to be called 'bias-crimes':

• University of Tennessee: Hate Crimes Laws: Progressive Politics or Balkanization? 
• Boston College: THE RHETORIC OF LEGAL BACKFIRE [against hate crime legislation]
• Harvard Symposium Essay: AGREEING TO AGREE: A PROPONENT AND OPPONENT OF HATE CRIME LAWS REACH FOR COMMON GROUND. (This is a particularly thoughtful, scholarly essay.)

[6] Some criticisms of hate crime legislation:

• A 'Google book'  excerpt of Jacobs' and Potter's book "Hate Crimes: Criminal Law and Identity Politics"
• FraudFactor: Fixing Criminal Justice System Weakness Only for a Select Few
• The Any Rand Institute, Op-Ed piece: Criminal law should not be used to enforce ideological orthodoxy.

[7] In Wisconsin v. Mitchell (1993), the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed and upheld Todd Mitchell's enhanced sentence for committing a hate crime.

[8] For XXXXX, substitute any particular race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability or sexual orientation.

[9] Criminal law:

• North Carolina Wesleyan College: Basic Intro to criminal law.
• From Northwestern Law School: What is a crime Outline.
• Boalt Law School: Criminal Law Outline.

[10] Quotes surrounding freedom of thoughts:

• Benjamin Franklin: "Without freedom of thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom"
• Victor Frankl: "The last of the human freedoms is to choose one's attitudes".
• William O. Douglas:  "Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us."

[11] "A History of Freedom of Thought"; The University Press, Cambridge, U.S.A., 1913

[12] "I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."  James Madison.