When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind.
Category: individualism
Independence through self-sufficiency
The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy. They are more: they are the best basis of public liberty, and the strongest bulwark of public safety. It follows, that the greater the proportion of this class to the whole society, the more free, the more independent, and the more happy must be the society itself.
The haves and have-nots
The real “haves” are they who can acquire freedom, self-confidence, and even riches without depriving others of them. They acquire all of these by developing and applying their potentialities. On the other hand, the real “have nots” are they who cannot have aught except by depriving others of it. They can feel free only by diminishing the freedom of others, self-confident by spreading fear and dependence among others, and rich by making others poor.
Don’t let them take you alive
Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink, and wear.
Becoming American
To one thing immigrants must make up their minds, or, they will be disappointed in every expectation of happiness as Americans. They must cast off the European skin, never to resume it.
Continue reading “Becoming American”There is no ‘we’ without ‘I’
Any group or ‘collective,’ large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members. In a free society, the ‘rights’ of any group are derived from the rights of its members through their voluntary individual choice and contractual agreement, and are merely the application of these individual rights to a specific undertaking … A group, as such, has no rights.
The people, authority, and responsibility
The people are Sovereign. … at the Revolution, the sovereignty devolved on the people; and they are truly the sovereigns of the country, but they are sovereigns without subjects … with none to govern but themselves; the citizens of America are equal as fellow citizens, and as joint tenants in the sovereignty.
The Constitution protects minorities
If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution.
In America, the citizen is sovereign
Men and women must prevail over the endless agencies and bureaus that would reduce human beings to computerized abstractions and program people into numbers and statistics. Today’s mounting danger is from mass government … we must not let them prevail. … Never forget that in America our sovereign is the citizen. … The state is a servant … It must never become an anonymous monstrosity that masters everyone.
Which shall govern?
The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.