Knowing Holyoake's views as a secularist, that religious considerations should be excluded from civil affairs and public education, it is easy to understand what he meant by the quote. Without it, it could be ambiguous and vague. Truth to him meant truth, not dogma.

Knowing what? Perhaps one knows and does not choose to apply. One may know all about sex, so does this mean he must apply what he knows? And what if he is willing but lacks the opportunity. Not a very useful axiom, I say

Imagine how many purses could have been stolen to equal the cost of one Florida elecrion.

A bit utopian, but what's the matter with that? It is still a good description of what a government should be.

I don't care, David, if Burke didn't mean supervise by the word, check? I don't like the idea of anyone, supervising anyone else, unless that's his job and was hired as a supervisor. But I do think the gov't has to oversee - not supervise - what kind of deception is going on in public companies, to protect the innocents involved. And your concern, about shirkers is best exemplified by those same CEOs I spoke of who spend their time on their yavchts or the golf courses and then very conveniently don't know what malpractices are going on in their own companies. I have no co-workers, as I have been retired for many years, but I do own stock in lots of companies and I can't go into the boardrooms to see what's going on, so I expect the government to do that by making them report more fully - not supervising. It is still the duty of a government to make people at all levels play fair.

It may sound undemocratic, but I believe the purpose of government is exactly to check the prosperity of those who would ultimately control all property and power unfairly Humans are not born equal in ability or, sadly, in ethics, and if left unchecked, there are those, like Ken Lay, of Enron, who would grab it all. Nobody but government can stop them, and in Lay's case, the government failed. It is the mark of third world countries, with no governmental control, to have all power and wealth in an unethical elite. Give the Ken Lays a chance and that's exactly what they'd love to be. The ethics of the poor on welfare and public aid are less a threat than the likes of Lay. The abuses of the system are more grave in the unethical rich than the unethical poor.

Right again, David, Walden was not a prison, or anything like it, but Thoreau actually wanted to be in jail as a form of protest, mainly against slavery. That's what the quote was about: "...prison ... the only house in a slave state in which a free man can abide with honor", and he wanted to be there, but he never did anything serious enough to land him there.

I do call it oppression, David. I think it describes the situation well. People of faith should let their values show by their own observance of them, not by forcing everyone to comply - whether about abortion, gay rights, public funding of their schoools, inserting "under God" into the Pledge, when many of us do not consider any supreme power running the country, etc They don't merely advocate their moral values, as you claim, they want to compel them. It is a constant battle to prevent their encroachment into almost every aspect of public's life. If we do not suffer oppression it is only because of the diligent effort to control it. They would have us back in the Dark Ages in no time if they could.

It was because of this concept of absolute authority of the monarch in 18th century England that we are independent today. Our concept is almost completely reversed now, wherein the president can do nothing right. At least that's true in the 21st century. And Bob, of Eugene. OR, if Al Gore had been president in 2001, we would definitely not be bogged down in an irrelevant hell-hole today, waiting for a more able president to clean up the mess. You may be glad we're there but I don't think most Americans are. One of many of the wrong-headed policies of our country now.

I didn't say Marx was benevolent, Mike I said that was the concept of his Socialism. But since you mentioned it, I'm not sure he wasn't. It was not until Stalin that Communism becamr tyrannical. Lenin and Marx were revered, altthough no one who remember them is still alive. Very few even remember Stalin. Do you? I do, very well - when he was our ally We saved him as we did Churchhill....And don't claim Marx had anything to do with anarchy. He was for a dictatorship. It was Bakunin who was the anarchist. Read what I said before. You may not believe it but Marx and Lenin were moral and ethical men, and atheists, but a benevolent dictorship, although ideal, cannot endure. Too much power corrupts - just like our present governent/