Kindness and compassion require the willingness to sacrifice something you have that has worth and that you may need for yourself one day. You need courage to exercise compassion. Kindness and compassion that does not require personal sacrifice is just empty, meaningless empathy. Feeling someone's pain does not help them. Taking the pain for them does.

Alfred the Great, king of Wessex, when he was asked what is justice replied that he knew it when he saw it. That is the jury's role in judging the law. I read somewhere about a farmer who was on trial for stealing sheep from another farmer who was a known cheat. The jury came back with a verdict of not guilty but he has to give back the sheep. The judge refused to accept the verdict and sent the jury to deliberate some more. The came back with the verdict not guilty and he can keep the sheep. Justice is sometimes more than the letter of the law.

But what about the children? Of course any kind of theft is good if only it's for the children (/sarcasm). By the way, the only fault I have found with Teddy Roosevelt is that he ran as a third party candidate and split the vote leading to the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson. That eventually lead to the 16th amendment and the income tax and the 17th amendment that destroyed states power under federalism.

Human beings must be expected to rise above the law of the jungle, that might makes right, and that ownership can be by right of conquest or thievery. People can and do sometimes (even often) rise above their baser instincts to champion justice for the weak. As long as enough do act like civilized individuals there is hope. When everyone starts behaving like animals (whether sheep, cattle, or wolves) the end is near. When might makes right then there will be no justice for anyone.

James 4:17 "Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin."

Many people, however, are prepared to see what really isn't there. They see it anyway.

What's the difference between ignorance and apathy? I don't know and I don't care.

Would anyone ever improve if they didn't have an honest critic whose purpose is to correct imperfections? Encouragement can only go so far and criticism has its place. Witness the modern school systems that offer only self-esteem programs and discourage teachers from grading papers with red ink lest the children's fragile psyches be damaged. Does anyone believe those students are better off who think highly of themselves but can't read?

I find it curious that this quote comes from a cleric who is presumably Christian. He apparently didn't believe what he preached since Christianity is all about converting the bad to the good.

People have always set up idols, looking for an easy life. Five thousand years ago people put faith in a statue to give them "free" stuff and "protection". Today people make government their idol and they're still looking for the same thing.

We always judge our own actions through the rose colored glasses of our good intentions. What few remember is that someone's good intentions have no practical value to anyone but themselves.

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die."---Mel Brooks.

Good observation, Dana.

So, I suppose "honest men" need to preempt the actions of evil men.

You say "potato." I say "po-tah-to."

That would be the right of self determination, warren, even though they had a warped vision on the rights of men who happened to be slaves.

The only way to have peace is to fight for it.

Peace at any price is never a good bargain. 1 Thessalonians 5:3 "For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape."

People volunteer for slavery every day. It is easy to be a slave. It takes work to be free. Every time someone collects a welfare check, sign up for a government program, bend to the will of some bureaucrat making regulations, they choose slavery. The masters can buy servitude from the slave himself.

Socialism has killed more people than all of the crazed religious lunatics in history. If we're going to start banning things, that's where I'd start.

The Espionage Act of 1917: the Patriot Act of its day (not that that's a bad thing). However, the more things change the more they stay the same. Maybe the Patriot Act needs a mechanism to strip away a few citizenships as well. I can think of a few to start with.

Malevolent human beings like Stalin, Hitler, or Mao can turn almost any thought into a "monster", but taking political philosophy seriously does not necessarily end in a police state. I am sure that the serious political philosophy of Thomas Paine or Samuel Adams was considered a monster by the British. I don't consider it so even though it led to revolution and war. Revolution and war are sometimes required, not for a police state, but for liberty.

I regard justice as my right and I will have it.

So, the key to peace is being poor? I seem to recall there was a World War that started during the not-so-Great Depression. It is not endless money that is the sinew of war; it is endless greed.

The Patriot Act is like a watered down version of the executive orders of the FDR administration before and during WWII. I suspect this quote by Murrow was made during that period.