The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance

The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false.

Paul Johnson

Election day is here.  Before you get caught up in the election day madness.  Check out the Tea Party.  This is a great video.  Too bad I haven’t found the opposing view.  I don’t agree with all of it but I did laugh.  I’m sure a reader will find an opposing view.

Been thinking about America and the cultural changes.  Some quotes from the past.  Can you guess who’s they are?

1. – Immigration

"In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

2. – Economics

"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work…after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. . . And an enormous debt to boot!"

3. – Culture

"When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic."

4- Vision

"Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive."

5. - Capitalism

“The inherent flaw in capitalism is the unequal distribution of benefits. The inherent flaw in socialism is the equal distribution of misery”

6. – Majorities

“Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).”

7. – Voting

“The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do.”

8. – Rights of Citizens

“when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security”

9. – African Americans

Everybody has asked the question. . ."What shall we do with the Negro?" I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature's plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!”

10. – Ideals

“The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie.”

Theodore Roosevelt, President

Henry Morgenthau, FDR’s Treasury Secretary

Theodore Roosevelt, President

Joe Biden, Vice President

Winston Churchill, Prime Minister

Ayn Rand, Writer

Joseph Stalin, General Secretary, Communist Party

Declaration of Independence

Frederick Douglass, American Social Reformer, Orator, Writer

Joseph A. Schumpeter, Economist & Political Scientist