Tag: 2021 October Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day: The Tragedy of Liberty

Susan Quinn
Susan Quinn
217
 

There are those who assert that revolution has swept the United States. That is not true. But there are some who are trying to bring it about. At least they are following the vocal technique which has led elsewhere to the tragedy of Liberty. Their slogans; their promise of Utopia; their denunciation of individual wickednesses as if these were the wards of Liberty; their misrepresentation  of deep-seated causes; their will to destruction of confidence and consequent disorganization in order to justify action; their stirring of class feeling and hatred; their will to clip and atrophy the legislative arm; their resentment of critic; their chatter of boycott, of threat and of force—all are typical enough of the methods of more violent action.

— Herbert Hoover, “The Challenge to Liberty”

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QOTD: Is This Quote Still True?

BastiatJunior
BastiatJunior
37201036
 

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. — Hanlon’s razor.

In saner times, Hanlon’s razor would be a reliable guide to understanding current events. But today, I’m not so sure. I’m not a conspiracy theorist — yet — but I’m thinking of taking it up.

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QOTD: Three Generations of Retcons is Enough

OmegaPaladin
OmegaPaladin
108566
 

Jacobson v. Massachusetts has become the catchall decision for justifying all kinds of pandemic countermeasures. I had not looked into the matter in detail, as I am not a lawyer (thank God). However, I ran across an article on SSRN from Josh Blackman (one of the writers at The Volokh Conspiracy) that dismantles how a decision to allow a jurisdiction to levy a fine equivalent to a parking ticket for the refusal to receive a vaccination against one of the most deadly diseases known to man (smallpox is a Risk Group 4 select agent, alongside Ebola and its relatives; by comparison, anthrax and the Black Death are merely Risk Group 3) mutated like a virus into allowing all kinds of measures under the rubric of public health.

It is perhaps unsurprising that the most disturbing U.S. Supreme Court decision to remain on the books as good case law plays a role here. Buck v. Bell is the infamous decision that allowed for the state to forcibly perform medical procedures on people without their consent to uphold the good of the gene pool, giving us the infamous line that “three generations of imbeciles are enough.” As if forcing a person to be fixed like a stray dog is not bad enough, there is evidence that Carrie Buck was not even mentally handicapped, nor was her honor student child, and she was likely set up by her lawyer, who was either horrendously incompetent or actually in favor of negative eugenics. You could use this decision to justify forced medical procedures on every person who holds a political position unpopular with political elites.

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QOTD: Concrete Floor

Clifford A. Brown
Clifford A. Brown
1012
 

deVOL Shaker kitchen, Balham, London

Tim Allen:] There’s a big concrete tank at the top of my hill that loads up with grey water and then flows out the drains and eventually comes down my driveway. And there’s always guys in there digging something out, and there’s a big device on the side that’s coated in tar. And I just see the top of their heads.

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QOTD: An October Garden

She
She
237
 

In my Autumn garden I was fain
To mourn among my scattered roses;
Alas for that last rosebud which uncloses
To Autumn’s languid sun and rain
When all the world is on the wane!
Which has not felt the sweet constraint of June,
Nor heard the nightingale in tune

Broad-faced asters by my garden walk,
You are but coarse compared with roses:
More choice, more dear that rosebud which uncloses,
Faint-scented, pinched, upon its stalk,
That least and last which cold winds balk;

A rose it is though least and last of all,
A rose to me though at the fall–Christina Rossetti, An October Garden

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QOTD: Not Who You Think

OmegaPaladin
OmegaPaladin
1511615
 

“If there was no crime and violence in communities of color, who would suffer?” — Graffiti on sidewalk outside of CTA Roosevelt Station, Chicago, Illinois

I first ran across this graffiti (clearly done with a stencil and pink paint) a month ago, and it got me thinking. Who would suffer, actually? We can see who the author believes would suffer: https://twitter.com/crimedrought has plenty of trashing of the police, and Trap House Chicago is apparently a “restorative justice clothing store” down on the South Side. (Obviously, CoC violations galore there.)

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Member Post

Lilly B
Lilly B
147
 

“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” – Terry McAuliffe, September 28, 2021 “He hated his own family and never tired of weaning his gifted students from their families. His students…had to be cured of the disastrous misconceptions, the “standardized unrealities” imposed on them by their mindless parents.” – Ravelstein, […]
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Quote of the Day: Am I Doing Enough?

Susan Quinn
Susan Quinn
138
 

Many years ago, I was talking to the fellow who taught me to meditate. I mentioned that I was afraid that I was not doing enough to serve G-d. Or…I was afraid that G-d had wanted me to do or be something that I was not doing/being. He asked me the following question: “What if you were sent here to help one person and you have already done that?” —Wayne McKibbin

 Many of us, religious or not, question ourselves and our role in the world: are we doing enough? Is what we’re doing meaningful or helpful? Whether we’re overachievers or committed to making a difference in the world, or if we just want to be a good parent, spouse, or friend, these questions come up.

I love the question that Wayne McKibbin asked my friend. The point was not whether her work on this earth had already been completed, but rather that it’s difficult to be certain what we are meant to do, how we can best do it, when we should spend the time (or not) to help another person or group of people, and if we have struck the right balance in contributing to life.

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Member Post

Arahant
Arahant
1610194
 

Have you ever run across something and thought, “Man, I could use that in a lot of situations?” As I was perusing the PIT, I ran across this gem from Matt Balzer: And people would probably respond “that’s not the point.” To which I would respond, “make better points.” Preview Open
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Quote of the Day: On Entitlement and Gratitude

She
She
2712
 

“I am not a Somali representative. I am not a Muslim representative. I am not a millennial representative. I am not a woman representative. I am a representative who happens to have all of these marginalized identities and can understand the intersectionality of all of them in a very unique way.” — Rep. Ilhan Omar

Ilhan Omar is a representative who was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, on October 4, 1982, into a family of military leaders, government officials, civil servants, and educators. After fleeing her homeland, which had descended (again) into civil war, she and her family spent four years in a Kenyan refugee camp, before qualifying for asylum and arriving in the United States in 1995, when she was 13 years old. She became a US citizen in 2000 when she was 17 years old.

She graduated from North Dakota State University (political science and international studies) in 2011, when she was 28 years old, and spent some time as a Policy Fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Hubert Humphrey School of Business affairs. She subsequently worked as a community nutritional educator in Minneapolis/Saint Paul, and by 2012 (when she was 30) she was dabbling in politics, working as campaign manager for a state senate candidate.

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Quote of the Day: Your Mouth Matters

Eustace C. Scrubb
Eustace C. Scrubb
1810
 

I just watched a truly wonderful film, Terrance Malick’s A Hidden Life, the story of Franz Jägerstätter, a Austrian who refused to fight for the Nazis. He was given the option of working as an orderly in a hospital even he wouldn’t serve as a soldier. But he still would have to pledge a loyalty oath to Adolf Hitler. This he would not do.

Franz was arrested and eventually sentenced to death. His priest came to see him shortly before his execution in 1943. The priest told him, “God doesn’t care what you say with your mouth, only what is in your heart. Say the oath and think what you like.“

There are any number of occasions where conservatives are encouraged these days to mouth words that we don’t believe. College students with progressive teachers are told to just parrot the woke jargon, get the grade, and live their true lives after graduation. Employees in diversity training courses are told just to check the right boxes and perhaps even nod as they are chastised for being of the wrong skin color, confess the guilt of their race and sexual preference, and then they’ll just get back to work. Don’t say all that you really think on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or you might be banned and then you’ll never get the new hot film takes or see your grand daughter’s birthday party or watch the hottest new dance steps.

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Member Post

She
She
4010
 

The Quote of the Day is the easiest way to start a fun conversation on Ricochet.  You don’t have to think up something intelligent, pithy, or eloquent yourself–just steal borrow (with proper credit, of course) from somebody else! You can share a written or spoken passage that you’ve come across and find worthy, a quote from popular, classical, or […]
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