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Tax Time Approaches, And Americans Are As Always Paying H & R Block Billions To Help Them Save Some Of Their Wealth From Their Ravenous Government. Pitiful, In A Way: It Underlines The Grim But Unacknowledged Fact That The Government Is Their Enemy And They Have To Hire Protection From It. But Don't We Enjoy 'self-government'? Well, If We Have It, I'd Hardly Say We Enjoy It. True, We Aren't Being Taxed By The Monarch Of Great Britain, But Our American-born Rulers Claim Far More Of Our Wealth Than The British Monarchs Ever Did.

-Joseph Sobran

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Tax Time Approaches, And

Joseph Sobran

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Tax Time Approaches, And Americans Are As Always Paying H & R Block Billions To Help Them Save Some Of Their Wealth From Their Ravenous Government. Pitiful, In A Way: It Underlines The Grim But Unacknowledged Fact That The Government Is Their Enemy And They Have To Hire Protection From It. But Don't We Enjoy 'self-government'? Well, If We Have It, I'd Hardly Say We Enjoy It. True, We Aren't Being Taxed By The Monarch Of Great Britain, But Our American-born Rulers Claim Far More Of Our Wealth Than The British Monarchs Ever Did.

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The Difference Between A Politician And A Pickpocket Is That A Pickpocket Doesn't Always Get Indignant When You Tell Him To Keep His Hands To Himself.

Mass Democracy Guarantees Stupidity. Masses Of People, Even If They're Individually Intelligent, Can Only Act Stupidly.

There Has Never Been A Humane Communist Regime. Marxism Is Inherently Totalitarian. It Recognizes No Moral Limits On The State. It’s The Most Convenient Ideology For Aspiring Tyrants; It Also Retains Its Appeal For Intellectuals, Who Have Proved Equally Skillful At Rationalizing Abuses Of Power And At Exculpating Themselves.

I Realize That The New York Times Probably Not Written For The Express Purpose Of Driving Me Mad; I Think Of It As Liberalism's Daily Bulletin Board.

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Anything Called A "program" Is Unconstitutional.

Man Is The Only Creature Disposed To Kill Huge Numbers Of Members Of His Own Species, And His Instrument Is Usually The State.

The Welfare State Is Institutionalized Crime - 'organized Plunder,' As The French Economist Frederic Bastiat Called It. It Systematizes What Is Intrinsically Wrong: Forcing Some People To Support Others. The Democrats Favor The Indefinite Expansion Of The Welfare State, Perpetually Increasing The Ratio Of Force To Freedom In Society.

Tyranny May Creep In Under The Outward Forms Of Traditional Law.

By Today's Standards King George Iii Was A Very Mild Tyrant Indeed. He Taxed His American Colonists At A Rate Of Only Pennies Per Annum. His Actual Impact On Their Personal Lives Was Trivial. He Had Arbitrary Power Over Them In Law And In Principle But In Fact It Was Seldom Exercised. If You Compare His Rule With That Of Today's U.s. Government You Have To Wonder Why We Celebrate Our Independence.

Nothing Annoys A 'progressive' Like Refugees From Communism, Who Give The Lie To The Great Socialist Dream.

Since Outright Slavery Has Been Discredited, "democracy" Is The Only Remaining Rationale For State Compulsion That Most People Will Accept.

An Anti-semite Used To Mean A Man Who Hated Jews. Now It Means A Man Who Is Hated By Jews.

Government Has Ceased To Mean Upholding And Reinforcing The Traditional Rights And Morals Of The Governed; It Now Means Compulsion In The Service Of Social Engineering.

All In All, The Framers Would Probably Agree That It's Better To Impeach Too Often Than Too Seldom. If Presidents Can't Be Virtuous, They Should At Least Be Nervous.

If Communism Was Liberalism In A Hurry, Liberalism Is Communism In Slow Motion.

If One Person In America Had Starved Over The Last 20 Years, You, Reader, Would Know His Name. The Media Would See To That. It Would Be The Most Thoroughly Documented Death Since John Kennedy's.

The Hypocrite Recognizes The Honest Man As His Deadly Enemy.

The Measure Of The State's Success Is That The Word Anarchy Frightens People, While The Word State Does Not.

We Have Been Living Amidst One Of The Great Revolutions Of Human History, And We Hardly Know It: The Penetration Of The State Into Every Aspect Of Human Life And Society. Some People Regard This As Good And "progressive," Others Regard It As Tyrannical; But Either Way, It's A Fact, A Transformation As Great As, Say, The Industrial Revolution. Absolutely Nothing Is Now Beyond The Scope Of State Power.

If We Need Women In Our Defense Forces, We Must Not Need Much Defense.

A Hypocritical Etiquette Forces Us To Pretend That The Jews Are Powerless Victims; And If You Don't Respect Their Victimhood, They'll Destroy You.

Tyranny Seldom Announces Itself...in Fact, A Tyranny May Exist Without An Individual Tyrant. A Whole Government, Even A Democratically Elected One, May Be Tyrannical.

Chesterton Spoke Of 'the Modern And Morbid Habit Of Always Sacrificing The Normal To The Abnormal.' It Would Be Hard To Sum Up Liberalism For Succinctly.

Loyalty To Your Country Should Never Require You To Lie About It.

When Liberals Clamor For 'diversity,' They Don't Necessarily Mean They Are Ready To Tolerate Actual Disagreement.

Democracy Has Proved Only That The Best Way To Gain Power Over People Is To Assure The People That They Are Ruling Themselves. Once They Believe That, They Make Wonderfully Submissive Slaves.

Democracies Have

Libertarian Party

In A Few More Days We Will Celebrate Xmas, The Day We Commemorate The Birth Of You-know-who. ...it Seems The Modern Consensus Of Enlightened People That His Name Should Be Used In Polite Society Only When Cursing.... [p]oliticians Are Often Eager To Associate Themselves Personally With You-know-who, Even -- And Especially -- When They Rather Flagrantly Ignore His Injunctions.... He Was Out Of Step Then, And He Is Out Of Step Now. He Is Eternally Out Of Step, And Eternally More Powerful Than Those Who Keep In Step. You Know Who I Mean.

The Second Amendment, Like The Rest Of The Bill Of Rights, Was Meant To Inhibit Only The Federal Government, Not The States. The Framers, As The Federalist Papers Attest (see No. 28), Saw The State Militias As Forces That Might Be Summoned Into Action Against The Federal Government Itself, If It Became Tyrannical.

Second Amendment

The Words Of Jesus, Including Those Jefferson And The Jesus Seminar Have Blue-pencilled, Have A Unique Permanence. They Don't Merely Survive As Aphoristic Wisdom; They Have An Authority In Our Hearts, Even When We Try To Deny Them. They Command. We Can Obey Or Rebel. That Is Why Jesus Is Still Not Only Loved But Hated - And Why Those Who Hate Him Feel They Have To Profess To Love Him.

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Liberals Have A New Wish Every Time Their Latest Wish Is Granted. Conservatives Should Make Them Spell Out Their Principles And Ideals. Instead Of Doing This, Conservatives Allow Liberals To Pursue Incremental Goals Without Revealing Their Ultimate Destination. So, Thanks To The Negligence Of Their Opponents, Liberals Control The Terms Of Every Debate By Always Demanding 'more' While Never Defining 'enough.' The Predictable Result Is That They Always Get More, And It's Never Enough.

Freedom Is Coming To Mean Little More Than The Right To Ask Permission.

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Libertarian Party

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Unitarian Church

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Voters Who Live Off Taxpayers Are The Democrats' Ace In The Hole. The Democrats Created Big Programs And Never Let The Recipients Forget It. This Gives Them An Initial Advantage Of Tens Of Millions Of Votes In Any Presidential Election.

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Politics Is The Conspiracy Of The Unproductive But Organized Against The Productive But Unorganized.

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Legalizing Abortion To Get Government Out Of The Bedroom Is Like Legalizing Cannibalism To Get Government Out Of The Kitchen.

War Is Just One More Big Government Program.

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Politicians Never Accuse You Of 'greed' For Wanting Other People's Money - Only For Wanting To Keep Your Own Money.

Liberalism's Fatal Flaw,... Is That It Has No Permanent Norms, Only A Succession Of Enthusiasms Espoused By Minor Prophets. Each Of These Seems Like A Hot New Idea To Liberals, But Soon Goes To Irksome And Destructive Extremes.

The Attempt To Silence A Man Is The Greatest Honor You Can Bestow On Him. It Means That You Recognize His Superiority To Yourself.

The Us Constitution Serves The Same Function As The British Royal Family: It Offers A Comforting Symbol Of Tradition And Continuity, Thereby Masking A Radical Change In The Actual System Of Power.

The Most Successful Revolutions Aren't Those That Are Celebrated With Parades And Banners, Drums And Trumpets, Cannons And Fireworks. The Really Successful Revolutions Are Those That Occur Quietly, Unnoticed, Uncommemorated. We Don't Celebrate The Day The United States Constitution Was Destroyed; It Didn't Happen On A Specific Date, And Most Americans Still Don't Realize It Happened At All. We Don't Say The Constitution Has Ceased To Exist; We Merely Say That It's A 'living Document.' But It Amounts To The Same Thing.

We Would Be Much Worse Without Christianity; But We Wouldn't Know It.

Too Many Voters Are Already Bought -- Not By Corporate Campaign Donors, But By The Government Itself.

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Judicial Review

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