Do you drill in a cellar with machine guns?

I hurried up to Columbia University to inform my friends on the campus that I had located the Communist Party, had made contact with it, and was, in fact, a registered member. By chance, the first man I met as I crossed the campus was one of my literary friends. I told him the news. As usual, he squinted one eye and lifted the eyebrow of the other, so that he looked as if he were peering through a monocle. “Do you drill in a cellar with machine guns?” he asked airily.    --Whittaker Chambers

Posted via web from jimnichols's posterous

Grasping Reality with Both Hands: New Republic Crashed-and-Burned Watch

Grasping Reality with Both Hands: New Republic Crashed-and-Burned Watch:

"You can describe what Jim Cramer does in many terms. But none of them are that he is 'trying to help... middle-class investors.'"

“It is easy to convince yourself that one-third of government spending is wasted. I, at least, also find it easy to convince myself that the other two-thirds of government spending buy capabilities and accomplishments that the private market--which, remember, could not exist at all without the institutional underpinnings provided by the government--could never provide at all." --Brad Delong

"Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, & county commissioners." — Edward Abbey

"The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations." --Noam Chomsky

"We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of few, but we can't have both."

--US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

"Instead of taxing rich people, governments borrow from them, and pay them interest for the privilege." --Doug Henwood, Wall Street

photography is political

"God forbid that photographers heave overboard the vacuous clichés about capturing 'human dignity' and actually engage with people and the politics they engage in on their own terms!" --Jim Johnson

Schopenhauer on anonymity

Thus Spoke Schopenhauer

[A]bove all, anonymity, that shield of all literary rascality, would have to disappear. It was introduced under the pretext of protecting the honest critic, who warned the public, against the resentment of the author and his friends. But where there is one case of this sort, there will be a hundred where it merely serves to take all responsibility from the man who cannot stand by what he has said […]. Often enough it is only a cloak for covering the obscurity, incompetence and insignificance of the critic. It is incredible what impudence these fellows will show, and what literary trickery they will venture to commit, as soon as they know they are safe under the shadow of anonymity. Let me recommend a general Anti-criticism, a universal medicine or panacea, to put a stop to all anonymous reviewing, whether it praises the bad or blames the good: Rascal! your name! For a man to wrap himself up and draw his hat over his face, and then fall upon people who are walking about without any disguise—this is not the part of a gentleman, it is the part of a scoundrel and a knave.

--Parerga und Paralipomena, Ch. 23

Rocker on Liberalism and Democracy...

"Liberalism and Democracy were pre-eminently political concepts, and since most of the original adherents of both did scarcely consider the economic conditions of society, the further development of these conditions could not be practically reconciled with the original principles of Democracy, and still less with those of Liberalism. Democracy with its motto of equality of all citizens before the law, and Liberalism with its right of man over his own person, both were wrecked on the realities of capitalist economy. As long as millions of human beings in every country have to sell their labour to a small minority of owners, and sink into the most wretched misery if they can find no buyers, the so-called equality before the law remains merely a pious fraud, since the laws are made by those who find themselves in possession of the social wealth. But in the same way there can be no talk of a right over one's own person, for that right ends when one is compelled to submit to the economic dictation of another if one does not want to starve" --Rudolf Rocker "The Ideology of Daily Life"

Bertrand Russell -- "Love is wise, hatred is foolish..."

"A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live."

"A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known."

"Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate."

"Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd."

"Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure."

"I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex."

Ahhh... too much going on this morning.

I slept in because I didn't get any sleep last night. But before I go, I'll leave you with this quote I came across last night...

To act in the present, one must understand oneself and ones situation; to understand this, one has to recapitulate the process by which the present situation has evolved. --Carl Braaten

quote of the day... and the Bush Legacy....

From Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly:

No, there was no Lewinsky during Bush's presidency. But my standard for "honor and dignity" has always been a little higher than that.

this at the end of his post on the Bush Legacy Project currently going on to rewrite history on failures such as Iraq

From the Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead

"there is an enormous element of of luck in human lots..."

Sometimes a blog quote is just golden...

"This opinion is based on an empirically sound foundation of absolutely nothing." --Ezra Klein

this was on the question in regards to October polling numbers and the vote on election day.

ASK A POLITICAL SCIENTIST!

You're seeing a lot of talk lately about how closely October's polls correlate with November's results. Princeton political scientist Larry Bartels e-mails:

Historically (since 1948), about 75-80% of the margin in a typical October poll has lasted until Election Day. If that holds true this year, the current best forecast of the popular vote based on the polls is that Sen. Obama will win by about 6 points.

I love this latin phrase...

In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas is a Latin phrase commonly translated as "unity in necessary things; liberty in doubtful things; charity in all things", or, more literally, "in necessary things unity; in uncertain things freedom; in everything compassion".

It is often misattributed to St. Augustine of Hippo, but seems to have been first used in the 17th century by a German Lutheran theologian, Peter Meiderlin (also known as Rupertus Meldenius), in the form "Verbo dicam: Si nos servaremus in necesariis Unitatem, in non-necessariis Libertatem, in utrisque Charitatem, optimo certe loco essent res nostrae.", meaning "In a word, let me say: if we might keep in necessary things Unity, in unnecessary things Freedom, and in both Charity, our affairs would certainly be in the best condition".

It is widely quoted in defence of theological and religious freedom.

This phrase is the motto of the Moravian Church and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (United States), as well as the Cartellverband der katholischen deutschen Studentenverbindungen, ÖCV and CV, and the Unitas Verband der Wissenschaftlichen Katholischen Studentenvereine, UV and UVÖ the associations of Catholic student fraternities of Austria and Germany. The phrase in its current form is found in Pope John XXIII's encyclical Ad Petri Cathedram [1].

It seems to be the essence of left libertarians... and you see the intellectual decent of Rousseau...

the collective whole (i.e. economy) first, individual liberties second, humanity always...

[update]
Here is something interesting on the phrases origin... as with all internet finds one must be weary but at least it cites sources--which I would have no time to track down anyways!