Recommended by R> Members “You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power – he’s free again.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
As others on Ricochet have noted, today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. As it is my turn to provide a quote of the day, I thought it appropriate to draw on his fund of wisdom for today’s quote.
More
Recommended by R> Members When I was growing up, Davey Crockett was a Disney character played by Fess Parker. I even had the coonskin hat. It wasn’t until much later that I learned that he was a real person who had a real role in American history. In fact, it would be good if we had more of his type now. We also need more like Horatio Bunce.
The following is a summary from a more extended article from the Foundation for Economic Education and I recommend reading it and remembering that, as the article says, “the precise rendering and some of the detail are fictional.”
More
Recommended by R> Members “When you wake up each morning, you can choose to be happy or choose to be sad. Unless some terrible catastrophe has occurred the night before, it is pretty much up to you. Tomorrow morning, when the sun shines through your window, choose to make it a happy day.” – Lynda Resnick
For me, the best thing about 2018 is that it is almost over. If I have had a worse year, I cannot recall it. My wife died, my father died, and my father-in-law (a man I have respected for nearly 50 years) will likely die before the year is out. I had to go to the emergency room in the middle of the night because of difficulties breathing. I have had money and job challenges.
More
Recommended by R> Members 
“Before a man will take a path that leads to a well, you must first teach him the meaning of thirst.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Having worked many years attempting to help those with mental health, addiction, and family issues, the above words have, over time, penetrated my bones.
More
Recommended by R> Members “The charge is often made against the intelligentsia and other members of the anointed that their theories and the policies based on them lack common sense. But the very commonness of common sense makes it unlikely to have any appeal to the anointed. How can they be wiser and nobler than everyone else while agreeing with everyone else?” – Thomas Sowell
I believe this bit of Sowell food explains a lot of the silliness in today’s SJW culture. How can you seem superior when you agree with the cannaille, the commoners? You have to come up with ever more esoteric and outre theories — or at least agree with them — in order to stand out from the herd. And by doing so become part of a different herd. (Or perhaps, really a flock, baaing out inanities with the rest of the sheep.)
More
Recommended by R> Members “When you’re in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, ‘Damn, that was fun.'” – Groucho Marx
Yes, it’s true. Sometimes the things you do are not the smartest. But it is always nice to know that there is someone who will have your back, even then — and think afterwards that it was fun. Kipling talked about that kind of friend in his poem The Thousandth Man.
More
“The silence must be longer. This music is about the silence. The sounds are there to surround the silence.” ― Arvo Pärt, Estonian composer
From his youth, Arvo Pärt was a gifted composer, starting by mimicking the neo-classicists before following the trend of modernist atonality. While the tastemakers insisted this was the proper path, Pärt was disappointed with his output and music itself.
More
Recommended by R> Members MoreThe most extreme examples of climate change were the ice ages and they were really a catastrophe for life in many parts of the world. And we don’t understand them.
We just don’t know why they started or why they come and go in a more or less periodic fashion. It’s all a big mystery. And if we don’t understand ice ages we don’t understand climate. – Freeman Dyson
Recommended by R> Members “Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil.” – Thomas Paine
Yesterday a Ricochet contributor was arguing Washington could do better than gridlock. My first thought was that while it could, it did better than gridlock only rarely. That is because, as Thomas Paine notes, government is generally a negative.
More
Recommended by R> Members “Why is it always our people? Why us? Bork, Thomas, Alito, and now Kavanaugh. Why us? Because it’s a noble cause in their eyes to destroy a conservative judicial candidate, and I hope it blows up in their face. I hope politically they pay a price for this … losing [the confirmation fight] is not enough, they need to pay a price at the ballot box.” — Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
He is right. Until the Democrats pay a price at the ballot box their incivility will only increase. When you are trying to train a dog not to make messes on the floor you need to rub their noses in the mess they made and say “No.” If you think what they did to Kavanaugh is acceptable, if you want to give political violence a pass, if you are good with virtue-signaling mobs destroying peoples lives stay home on November 6, or go ahead and vote Democrat. If you are tired of this behavior, vote them out of office.
More
Recommended by R> Members In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. – Paul Harvey
Yes, things are going crazy. Someone in an article on a news site commented that this year has been tumblr fan fiction weird. It has.
More
Recommended by R> Members “If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.” – George S. Patton
A new meme has appeared on the Internet mocking the lockstep thinking of leftists and social justice warriors: the NPC meme. It casts these people as non-player characters (NPCs), analogizing them to computer AI characters which appear in role-playing games.
More
Recommended by R> Members An engineer passing a pond heard a frog say, “If you kiss me, I’ll turn into a beautiful princess.” He picked up the frog, looked at it, and put it in his pocket. The frog said, “Why didn’t you kiss me?” Replied the engineer, “Look, I’m an engineer. I don’t have time for a girlfriend, […]
This is a members-only post on Ricochet's Member Feed. Want to read it? Join Ricochet’s growing community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Get your first month free.
Recommended by R> Members Shelby Steele’s September 24 Op-ed in the Wall Street Journal is worthy of being quoted in its entirety, because every sentence is quotable. But I chose a couple of the choicest parts. Steele opines that the left’s descent into hatred started in the 1960s, when:
MoreAmerica finally accepted that slavery and segregation were profound moral failings. That acceptance changed America forever. It imposed a new moral imperative: America would have to show itself redeemed of these immoralities in order to stand as a legitimate democracy. The genius of the left in the ’60s was simply to perceive the new moral imperative, and then to identify itself with it. Thus the labor of redeeming the nation from its immoral past would fall on the left. The left … would set the terms of this legitimacy and deliver America from shame to decency.
Recommended by R> Members “Every father should remember one day his son will follow his example, not his advice.” – Charles Kettering
I worked as an engineer for many years before shifting into technical writing. I have three adult sons. All three are engineers. I did not advise them to be engineers. I advised them to follow the careers that would serve them best.
More
Recommended by R> Members “Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.” – Thomas Sowell
The truth of this observation is being made plain by the failure of the United States education system. Instead of being centers to educate and civilize our next generation they have become centers to indoctrinate and foster barbarism.
More
Recommended by R> Members “A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.” – Mark Twain Yesterday someone asked me about the books I review, how I decide to pick them, and how I got into reviewing books. I read. Boy, do I read. I have always been a voracious reader – even in first […]
This is a members-only post on Ricochet's Member Feed. Want to read it? Join Ricochet’s growing community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Get your first month free.
Recommended by R> Members Left-wing zealots have often been prepared to ride roughshod over due process and basic considerations of fairness when they think they can get away with it. For them the ends always seem to justify the means. That is precisely how their predecessors came to create the gulag. – Margaret Thatcher
It appears we are seeing this play out in this week’s news, but it has been a problem for years. Certainly since the Department of Education changed standards on sexual assault accusations on campus.
More
Recommended by R> Members Virtually no idea is too ridiculous to be accepted, even by very intelligent and highly educated people, if it provides a way for them to feel special and important. Some confuse that feeling with idealism. – Thomas Sowell
This seems to be the era for that kind of thinking. Some people advocate saving the world by banning straws. Others insist any speech they disagree with is hate speech, unprotected by the Constitution, and prosecutable. Others insist the only way to save the Republican party is vote a straight Democratic ticket this fall. And let’s not get into those who argue the Moon landing was faked or that the collapse of the Twin Towers was due to a government conspiracy rather than Islamofascist terrorists because, truth.
More
Recommended by R> Members Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order. – Justice Robert H. Jackson writing for the 6-3 majority in West Virginia v. Barnette, 1943.
Freedom of speech exists to protect the opinions and the speech we disagree with. It is not needed for things for which a broad consensus exists. There is no “hate speech” exception, because “hate speech” soon becomes equivalent to “speech with which I disagree.”
More
By 
By 
By 
By 
By 
By 