Men are most free in the absence of law. The question is how much freedom we are willing to give up in order to create more laws. Unfortunately for me, that threshold was crossed before I was born.

Liberty is neither a right nor a duty. It is a responsability. It is our duty to our children to maintain it. And when secured it is our right to enjoy its fruits.

This nation has a long history of "dispensing with fundamental constitutional guarantees"; the War amongst the States being the best example.

Why do police officers or military personnel need handguns? To protect themselves from the evil they are charged with seeking out. But evil by its very nature avoids those who can protect themselves, preferring instead to prey on the weak. Mr. Gartner would know this, were he not a fool.

How did Cicero (or whomever) forsee the coming of Jimmy Carter two thousand years ago?

To Waffler Companies that don't hire more qualified people because they belong to a minority group are destined to fail. A federal government that hires less qualified people because they belong to a minority group is also destined to fail. Discrimination cuts both ways.

Ronald Reagan was the last American President to actually attempt to empower the states, decrease federal taxes, and uphold the Constitution. His failure to accomplish his lofty goals still gave rise to the single most prosperous decade in American history, in spite of the bungling of President George H.W. Bush and the pandering and depravity of President William J. Clinton.

.... and so it has been.

When did worldwide recognition become the test of soverignty? Does the fact that Algeria, Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Guinea, Libya, Mali, Morocco, Niger, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia, Cuba, North Korea, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Pakistan, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates and Yemen fail to recognize Isreal's soverignty mean that Israel does't exist? No. It means that other governments have their own interests and their own agendas. A soverign government or confederation of governments is defined by those consenting to be governed.

Goldwater hoped that the federal government could be slowly decreased to its intended role, thus minimizing the pain to those who have come to depend on others. In this he was an idealist and a humanitarian. His mistake is that all central governments grow their own power at the expense of the governed until they are unsustainable and collapse fully and are replaced by more localized governments or usurped by foreign ones.

Is this a socialist protectionist extolling the importance free speech? He must have been talking about free speech that he agreed with.

This quote is particularly relevant to today as it deals with another period in time when Americans were becoming increasingly divided with some advocating schizm while others, including Webster, advocated unity.