Category: Quotes from American Presidents
How to Choose a True Leader in the 2020 Election | Intellectual Takeout | Larry Brownstein
While Joe Biden and Kamala Harris go on and on about leadership we should look back to leadership lessons from Thomas Jefferson’s first inaugural address.
Harris says she wants a mandate, yet Jefferson understood the country was a republic, not a democracy. In the Constitution, there are no provisions for claiming a governing mandate; claiming to have a mandate based on a majority vote, Jefferson would say violates a “sacred principle” and makes you an oppressive tyrant:
“Though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.”
Many have pointed out that today’s progressives behave like “Medieval Inquisitors.” Jefferson pointed to political intolerance as “despotic” and as “wicked” as religious intolerance:
Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions.
So, what should government do? Jefferson was clear:
A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
In his address, Jefferson didn’t promise a single new program, but he explored the principles by which he would lead:
Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies…
Watch “If We Lose John Locke, We Lose America” on YouTube
2084: American Apocalypse – by James Keena
For anyone not yet convinced of the dangers to civil society posed by divisive “isms” and ideologies, including religious dogma and the murderous results of forsaking the sovereignty of the individual, this book is a must read.
James Keena calls into question the notion that our society simply swings indefinitely like a pendulum between the political right and political left. He makes the case that allegiance to either faction will eventually lead to tyranny, oppression and death.
And that the solution always returns to individual sovereignty; not Darwinian rugged individualism. It starts with a true understanding that entropy is always fought at the individual level. No one can escape that responsibility; to do otherwise unfairly burdens others with your obligation.
Karma is not a boomerang, but a seed that either bears good fruit or poisons the tree. And the bonds made between individuals, families and friends which are based on love & respect & benevolence cannot be scaled to apply between millions of strangers.
The only way to ensure the reproducibility of peaceful collaboration on a large scale is for society to be based on the bedrock principle that the only just law is one that protects individual sanctity and does not tolerate coercion. We should not coerce or allow ourselves or others to be coerced.
I think you might like this book – “2084: American Apocalypse (The Pathless Land Series Book 1)” by James Keena.
Start reading it for free: https://a.co/6mBr6gE
Check Your Scientism!
You might be Scientismist if…
…you source-cite frantically to substantiate your views, even if you haven’t analyzed the data or the methods used or considered the limitations of the findings?
…you automatically believe certain sources and dismiss others without reading the original citations.
…you get your science from Facebook ads
…you believe the use of the phrase “scientific study” imparts devine validation to the conclusions.
…assume peer review is a real thing.
…don’t know the difference between a RCT, case-controlled study, cross-sectional study, cohort study, retrospective or prospective study…and don’t want to because it might call into question validity of your narrative!
…assume strong correlation is same as causation…AND don’t care if you’re wrong as long as it helps make your point!
And the #1 clue that you may be a Scientismist… When your favorite saying is, “the NIH says it, I believe and that settles it!”
Publishing a “study” does not bestow validation and data is mishandled as often as not; which is why much of the medical literature is wrong.
Hyperrational arrogance leads to scientism, which is not the same as good science.
Don’t be a scientismist!
Calvin Coolidge, the Declaration of Independence, and Limits on the Power of Government | International Liberty
“…In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man — these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. …It was in the contemplation of these truths that the fathers made their declaration and adopted their Constitution. It was to establish a free government, which must not be permitted to degenerate into the unrestrained authority of a mere majority or the unbridled weight of a mere influential few. …These are our guaranties of liberty. As a result of these methods enterprise has been duly protected from confiscation, the people have been free from oppression.“
Discrimination and Disparities with Thomas Sowell
“The disconnect between the intention and what emerges”
A conversation with Dr. Thomas Sowell about the folly of political initiatives to solve disparate impact. With predictable irony, these same interventions often exacerbate the same problems the were commissioned to fix.
PassionForSubro » Health Insurance is NOT Health Care
“Just as health insurance is not health care, so too health insurance reform is not health care reform. Yet, because the ACA got so much press, and many previously uninsured individuals did secure insurance (giving us all the warm and fuzzies), the result was a nationwide misconception that affordable insurance equates with affordable health care. For many, ObamaCare is therefore viewed as a success because millions of uninsured Americans are now insured.
Source: PassionForSubro » Health Insurance is NOT Health Care
