MoreRoper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Quote of the Day: The Benefit of the Law
Tag: “Quote of the Day” Series
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“Nightmares exist outside of logic, and there’s little fun to be had in explanations; they’re antithetical to the poetry of fear.” ― Stephen King It keeps on coming back. Even in daydreams, a horrible vision occasionally becomes apparent. Suddenly I am everything I hate, a puppet of desires, a mindless slave of pleasure. […]
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Quote of the Day: White Guilt
“‘And am I answerable that thoughtless and unprincipled men exist, whose shades of countenance may resemble mine?’ Cora calmly demanded of the excited savage.”
— James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans
Nothing is new. Published in 1826, Cooper was tackling the issue of collective white guilt for sins against American Indians. Cora’s question struck me as so timeless and relevant to our current controversies over reparations and the American sin of slavery. It’s really an argument in defense of herself as an individual. Thus, it’s an argument that places individual character and behavior above racial and tribal identity.
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The Quote of the Day is the easiest way to start a fun conversation on Ricochet. You don’t have to be intelligent, pithy, or eloquent yourself. You can share a written passage that you find interesting, or even something from a favorite movie. You can present the naked quote, or add your thoughts on how it […]
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Quote of the Day: The Great Success Story
More“Nobody thought we’d do this. Nobody really thinks it will work do they?”
“No. But you just described every great success story.”
Quote of the Day: Tolerance and Religion
“The frustrating thing is that those who are attacking religion claim they are doing it in the name of tolerance, freedom, and openmindedness. Question: Isn’t the real truth that they are intolerant of religion? They refuse to tolerate its importance in our lives.”
– Ronald Reagan
We saw that illustrated by Robert “Beto” O’Rourke this last Thursday when he threatened to strip churches of tax-exempt status if they did not perform same-sex “marriages,” and the Democrats cheered. This bigoted, intolerant position was (of course) framed as a means of fighting bigotry and intolerance.
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It’s one thing to keep politics out of games, which I am still a proponent of doing. It’s another to unfairly and harshly punish voices that speak out against corruption, against abuses of human rights, and freedom…. But enough is enough. I stand with Hong Kong, and I oppose Blizzard’s obvious and laughably transparent fear […]
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Quote of the Day: Happy Henry Mühlenberg Day!
“JULY 4 [1776]. Today the Continental Congress openly declared the united provinces of North America to be free and independent states. This has caused some thoughtful and far-seeing melancholici to be down in the mouth; on the other hand, it has caused some sanguine and short-sighted persons to exult and shout with joy. It will appear in the end who has played the right tune. This remains as a comfort to believers: There is One who sits at the rudder, who has the plan of the whole before him, to whom all power in heaven and one earth is given, and who has never yet made a mistake in his government. He it is who neither sleeps nor slumbers and who has asked his people to pray, ‘Hallowed by thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done.'”
—Diary of a Colonial Clergyman, by Heinrich Melchior Mühlenberg
Though you may not know the name, Heinrich Melchior Mühlenberg is kind of a big deal among Lutherans. Born in Einbeck in Hanover in 1711, Mühlenberg was destined to become the patriarch of Lutheranism in North America. After studying at the University of Göttingen, he was ordained into the ministry in 1739, and accepted a call overseas to the German-speaking Lutherans in Pennsylvania in 1742.
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Quote of the Day: Plus ça Change
“From their roosts in the great cities, and certain collegiate eyries, the left wing intellectuals of almost every feather (and that was most of the intellectuals in the country) swooped and fluttered in flocks like sea fowl – puffins, skimmers, skuas and boobies – and gave vent to hoarse cries and defilements. … No depravity was too bizarre to ‘explain’ Chambers motives for calling Hiss a communist. No hypothesis was too preposterous, no speculation too fantastic, to ‘explain’ how all those State Department documents came to be copied on Hiss’s Woodstock typewriter. Only the truth became too preposterous to entertain.”– Witness, Whittaker Chambers
I was born in 1952, the year that Whittaker Chambers publisher Witness. For all these years I somehow missed out on learning much about the late 1940s and the events that led up to the Hiss trial and eventually the McCarthy hearings. I finally picked up a copy of Witness and set about plugging the gaps in my education. The book is something of a hard slog as Chambers tends towards the philosophical and only sprinkles in the narrative at intervals but it is well worth a read if you have not.
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Ed Driscoll on Instapundit linked to Ricochet’s The Tea Party Movement post of @omegapaladin. Of course, it helped that Instapundit founder Professor Reynold’s words were used in that post. (I was just the conduit because @omegapaladin had (temporary) problems posting on Ricochet) More
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The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind cannot stay in the cradle forever. – Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was a largely self-taught scientist born in 1857 who pioneered most of the basic concepts in astronautics. He developed the rocket equation, among other things. He was focused on space flight before we had achieved powered […]
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Quote of the Day: The Tea Party Movement
More“Brooks is, of course, horrified at Trump and his supporters, whom he finds childish, thuggish and contemptuous of the things that David Brooks likes about today’s America. It’s clear that he’d like a social/political revolution that was more refined, better-mannered, more focused on the Constitution and, well, more bourgeois as opposed to in-your-face and working class.
“The thing is, we had that movement. It was the Tea Party movement.… When politeness and orderliness are met with contempt and betrayal, do not be surprised if the response is something less polite, and less orderly.” — Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds
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We had a full harvest of September Quote of the Day posts, with many making the Main Feed. The leaves are turning, but you can still share your favorite quote on the October Signup Sheet. Even if daylight is getting shorter, we make it easy to “Start a Conversation” by including tips for finding great quotes. […]
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Quote of the Day: Faith
“Economics is not the central problem of this century. It is a relative problem which can be solved in relative ways. Faith is the central problem of this age. The Western world does not know it, but it already possesses the answer to this problem – but only provided its faith in God and the freedom He enjoins is as great as Communism’s faith in Man.” — Whittaker Chambers, Witness
These words remain applicable today, and yet so many of our current political debates focus on economics. As a parent of children attending public schools, I see faith in God being deliberately replaced with faith in man. Schools eagerly preach the religion of environmentalism under the guise of science, or English, or whatever other subject they can tangentially relate to its themes.
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Quote of the Day: Heretics and Converts
“As the old saying has it, the left looks for heretics and the right looks for converts, and both find what they’re looking for. The effect is no doubt subliminal, but people who treat you like crap are, over time, less persuasive than people who don’t. If people on the Left are so unhappy about how many former allies are changing their views, perhaps they should examine how those allies are treated.” – Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit)
Reynolds wrote this over a decade ago, during the early years of Instapundit. Yet I believe it remains true today, and is one reason I believe the Democrats will lose the 2020 election bigly. They are alienating too many people, and alienating them at an increasing rate. They are attacking their own allies, too, over minor differences in dogma.
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Quote of the Day: The Infallible Left
“A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened. Then, again, every major change in policy demands a corresponding change of doctrine and a revaluation of prominent historical figures.” — George Orwell, “The Prevention of Literature”, Polemic (January 1946)
Have you ever noticed the continuous tendency to remove “inconvenient” episodes from history? Consider that 1970s environmentalists believed in a new Ice Age and that Bill Clinton promoted the Defense of Marriage Act in the 1990s. Obama was opposed to gay marriage then he was in favor immediately after the Supreme Court decision. There are lots of problematic lines from prominent Democrats and leftists across history but the Democrats are always portrayed as right and on the side of all that is good. If people are perfectible, obviously their side is perfect and always was perfect. Any problems are someone else’s fault.
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October is for raking leaves and selecting a date for your Quote of the Day. It’s the easiest way to start a fun conversation on Ricochet, and we’ll give you tips for finding great quotes. Many Quote of the Day posts make the Main Feed and some even garner close to 100 comments. Join in the fun and sign […]
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Quote of the Day: Winning and Losing
“Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.” – Vince Lombardi
With a new election coming up we can see plenty of illustrations of this principle – with both parties.
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Quote of the Day: One Standard
“The truth is most conservatives are fine accepting apologies for dumb stuff said or done years ago. Unfortunately, liberals refuse to forgive conservatives so we have no choice but to do the same to you. It doesn’t have to be this way. We only ask for one standard.” – Chris Barron (2019-09-18)
It’s not from an extremely famous figure (he is a Fox Business contributor). It’s not an extremely pithy one-liner. In that tweet, however, you have the summary for so much of the current situation in the GOP.
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Quote of the Day: Constitution Day
Pro [from Federalist No. 10]:
MoreThe influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State.